Dear Superman
by twistedservice
Summary: There's no point in fighting all of your battles alone. Sincerely, your kryptonite. —victor tie-in


Welcome to the stupidly long one-shot that No One asked for. I started it last October, stopped writing it entirely while I was writing Invictus, and... here we are. Lo and behold.

This was supposed to be a birthday present! In June! And then a Christmas present! And Christmas is in December! October is totally good enough!

This is just a _little _thing about two of my victors, aka a ship I didn't even create myself (thanks, dearest) and the snowball effect they had on my thoughts. There's a lot of characters from the 90's eras of my victors in it, as well as a few before and after, all of which you can see on the blog (secondcenturyvictors at blogspot) if you're so inclined, but it's not all that important. They're just about all dead 60-odd years in the future anyway.

I'd like to make it very clear that this isn't their _whole _life, not even close. You'd think with this many words it would be. I actually didn't even get into their thirties. Ultimately I wanted to focus on what made them and shaped them both individually and together and end it on a good note. I like to think I succeeded in that. Some things got focus because I'm me and almost hilariously self-indulgent and some didn't because I think some things are better left unsaid.

Or to my imagination, which is greatly better at describing things than I usually am via any sort of writing.

TW: that General Hunger Games Mood (murder, gore, heavy on the PTSD), as well as suicide (very briefly mentioned and unrelated to the main characters) and assault in two instances, both attempted and unsuccessful. It's honestly on the tame side, I'd say, unless you're very easily squicked out in which case... why are you reading anything I write. Stop.

* * *

_"love is just a synonym for absinthe._  
_absinthe is a synonym for "i don't_  
_know what i'm doing anymore."_  
—salma deera, letters from medea

* * *

The issue with Carden Kenmore was the in-between, you see.

He wasn't the smartest, but not the dumbest. Not the tallest, but not the shortest. Not the most selfless but not the most selfish, either.

He wasn't bloodthirsty but he had still murdered. Very few things of the in-between mattered after that.

On the other hand, the issue with Aleron Grenados was the expectation to get out of the in-between.

His parents expected a lot of things. His friends, few as they were, expected a lot of things. The trainers expected him to be fine when they pulled him aside two months before the ninety-fourth and told him that they _could _send him in, he was good enough of course, but they were going to choose someone else in order to give him a final year to prepare. A sacrificial lamb of sorts. He still remembers the look in Rydel Willard's eyes when he got picked. Like fairy lights. Like stars.

You couldn't see his eyes when he died, face down in the lake after the Seven guy finished drowning him.

* * *

February 20th, 2213.

Aleron fucking hates the cold.

He hates the wind, he hates winter. If it ever snowed in Four he would throw himself off the bluffs in Blueville.

It's positively _freezing _when he finally packs everything up into two bags and crawls out his window and down the drainpipe. He knows his father fell asleep on the couch, and he won't risk the front door with that proximity. That's what happens after his parents have one of their blow-ups. They scream and stand too close and Aleron waits for one of them to be the first to strike.

It never happens, of course, but he still imagines it. He's still imagining it when he shuffles up the Academy steps to find Auden resetting the training dummies.

He turned sixteen two days ago. Blew out birthday candles and had nothing to wish for. "I can't live there anymore."

Auden doesn't miss a beat. "C'mon, then."

And that's how he meets Myca.

* * *

April 8th, 2214.

Attending Ilona's funeral is mandatory for every active trainee at the Academy.

It seems sort of unfair, especially for the younger ones that never really knew her, but they all show up regardless. It's a very brutally somber affair; Auden cries, and Auden never cries. Myca spends the whole time non-discreetly sniffling and then squeezing the living daylights out of his arm whenever someone gets emotional during their speech.

They tried to get him to give one, him and Myca both. He wrote down six words on a notepad he scrounged up from the back office and then gave up. He doesn't think Myca even tried.

One of them was going to be her tribute this year; they're both going to be Auden's, now, and he looks as if he's falling apart at the seams.

He doesn't know it, then, but that's the moment he decides he's coming back out.

No matter the cost.

* * *

June 15th, 2214.

"If you're the one that wins, what do you want to do?" Rafos asks, somewhere shy of four in the morning.

Carden would be asleep, certainly, if the two of them weren't lying in a sandbox. It's softer than the ground, the ground that's soaked with Noelle's blood. Something came out of the lake this afternoon and ripped her throat open, some sort of weird floppy water monster.

He didn't see what. That's just what Rafos told him. The hovercraft took the body before he got back from his scavenging, so there's no proving him wrong.

He shrugs. "Live a semi-happy life, I guess."

Rafos hums - it sounds like agreement, so he closes his eyes. They haven't been doing so good on watches lately.

He only has one thought the next morning when Rafos tries to kill him, just _he looks like every other fucking Twelve that gets reaped_, and he ends up having to pull half his intestines through a gaping hole in his stomach when he refuses to die, just like every other fucking Twelve that gets reaped.

He still doesn't know what went wrong, there.

He stopped trying to figure it out five minutes after it happened.

* * *

June 18th, 2214

Carden doesn't realize the knife is serrated until it's in his stomach.

To be fair, he doesn't realize it then either. The magnitude doesn't hit until she's pulling the knife free and some of his insides come out with it.

Just before he hits the ground he thinks _this is karma for Rafos, isn't it?_ and then _I probably shouldn't have killed Mariah, huh_?

She wanted to ally with him. If she was here now he might not be on the ground with an arrow in his leg and half his guts hanging out.

Everything's happening too fast. Eighteen days, and now the Gamemakers are done. He saw the Three guy go down from a distance, arrow to the throat. That was one. He counts down the rest of them in his head before he falls, and then it doesn't matter. It's the Five guy next, and then Kendall. And then him. Glisten catches him and nearly runs him through.

He's still on the ground when the scream erupts above him and a body trips over his legs and then lands across his abdomen. Three girl, Landry's partner. Eighteen days together and this is what they got, a jagged cut in her neck from the serration.

He breathes. Counts the cannons. Glisten leaves and he rolls over, taking Amren's body with him. Everything goes white hot with pain.

Four cannons. The three Careers are five feet away going at it, like they haven't realized.

They haven't realized.

Ulpia goes down first. She's the strongest, but the two of them take turns going at her until she falls. Glisten whirls around before he can even get a breath out and buries the knife in Mettius' chest.

And just like that, she's won. Fifteen minutes or so.

That's what she thinks.

She's at the lake's edge, scooping up handfuls of water to clear the blood from her hands and face. There's no announcement, no hovercraft. No one's coming, because she's not the only one left. He inches forward and slips the sword's hilt free from Amren's lifeless hand. This is the girl that killed Iry eighteen days ago, the one that said she was coming after the rest of them too.

She must hear the shift when he gets to his feet against all impossible odds, when he gets the sword into both hands.

Her eyes, when she turns around and sees him standing there, are one of the funniest things he's ever had the great privilege to look at it.

"I'm not even sorry," he says, and plunges the sword into her chest.

* * *

July 14th, 2214.

"How ya doing, bro?" Faelin asked, leaning in his doorway

"Same old, same old."

The same old wasn't the same, not at all. Before if Carden was laying in bed at one in the morning he'd be asleep, or at least about to be. Now he had every single crack and it's direction of travel memorized after only having been home for two weeks. He didn't think a house in the village would have cracks in the ceiling.

"You should go to sleep."

"Would if I could, sis."

"It'll get better, you know," she murmurs. "Easier."

"Is that you talking, or Aurora?" he asks. But the fact of the matter is his siblings, his parents, they don't understand it. Even Aurora doesn't. Their experiences are different, their kills. The way they handle all of these things even more-so.

He can sense Faelin frowning, but where everyone else has been pushing, she's kept oddly quiet. It's nice when this whole experience feels loud enough.

"See you in the morning," she says, and he waves in acknowledgement as she clicks his door shut, footsteps fading down the hall.

* * *

June 5th, 2215.

The first time Carden meets Aleron he thinks nothing of it.

He's wandering the halls before the chariots, taking things in. He was too high-strung during his Games to really do it then. That, and he's not entirely sure where they took Sadie and Persis to get ready. He thinks mentors should be better at keeping track of their tributes, but he doesn't really have any experience.

He finds Sadie, eventually, but not before he finds Aleron in the room before. While the rest of the Careers seem eager enough, boisterous at best, this guy doesn't. He seems like he puts a rather small cap on the words he can use each today, and on this gloriously sunny day has already used three quarters of them before lunch.

He doesn't know how long he stares, or why, but eventually Aleron turns only enough to give him a pretty spectacular dose of side-eye. "Can I help you?"

Knock four more words off his limit.

Carden shakes his head, and doesn't move a muscle. Aleron turns back to the mirror. "Take a picture, then."

So Carden does. He pulls out his phone and leaves the flash on, so that when he peels off down the hall Aleron Grenados knows that he took his advice to heart, even if he wasn't looking to see it himself.

* * *

June 11th, 2215.

There are four of them left.

It's him and Myca. The girl from Nine who's name neither of them can remember. Redmond, the volunteer from Seven. Aleron hasn't seen hide nor hair of either of them since the bloodbath.

Anyone they have seen has died.

There's a parachute, though. Myca dives after it and disappears into the water where it sinks while he stays on the shelf of rock clinging to the cave wall. There's a flicker to his left along the next protruding rock, drawn by the pinging, and they disappear.

Aleron launches a knife and misses as Redmond leaps for the cave wall. It's an easy jump to catch up to him, but Redmond is smaller and faster and a _Seven _of all things, scaling up the rocks like he's been doing it since the day he was born. That's probably the only reason he's still alive, hauling himself up with each invisible handhold. Aleron won't catch him, so he digs in his feet and jumps.

He's got the longer reach. His fingers close around Redmond's ankle and they both go tumbling into the water with a tremendous crash.

He knows instantly that Redmond can swim - Regan could, too, before he caught her in the water and killed her. That was the thing about Seven - they were fast and they were strong, they could climb and they had enough access to water in certain parts that they could swim, too. He still wondered to this day how they hadn't ended up Careers. They should have.

Aleron lets himself sink with the weight, ignoring Redmond's thrashing. He's fighting with everything he has, and it's not going to be enough. Aleron's got thirty to forty pounds on him, easy. All he has to do is keep him under until he drowns.

But he's just not drowning.

He realizes, very belatedly, that his own lungs are screaming for air. Redmond is _still _struggling, though it's getting weaker. The surface is getting further away. The water down here is so dark that he can't see anything other than their two bodies.

He does the only thing he can - he lets go.

There's no sticking around to wait to see if it was good enough. He shoots past Redmond on his way to the surface. All he can imagine is the way his lungs are going to burst, the burn in his chest, the weight of his own limbs with every pass up and then back down. It's worse every-time.

He barely gets back to the surface.

He crests the water with a horrific gasp and inhale that makes his vision go black at the edges with the sudden return of oxygen. The cave wall is smooth and slippery - he almost sinks back under in a brief moment of panic, and flounders about like he's forgotten how to swim until Myca's hand locks around his arm and pulls him back to the rocks. She drags him out with a tremendous heave that sprawls him out on his side, still sucking in breaths too quick and too fast. There's still not enough air.

"Easy," she says quietly, laying a hand on his back. "That was way too long."

You're telling him. It was longer than it really felt like. It had to have been.

A cannon sounds, finally, and he flinches. Myca looks over him, watching the water, but it's gone still. He raises his head to look around, though it suddenly feels a hundred pounds heavier.

"She'd have to swim from either side to get to us," Myca comments. That's good. He lays his head back down on the rock, reaching a feeble hand for the parachute cords wrapped around her wrist. There's nothing attached to it that he can see, but she turns around a single scrap of paper for him to read. _TURN AROUND _it reads, the letters bleeding at the edges.

Myca pulls something close, a backpack Aleron hadn't noticed before. "He had this," she says, gesturing to the quiver and bow through the straps. "He was going to get at least one of us."

Him, he realizes. Redmond was going to get him. He was the bigger target, and Myca had been closer to the water when the parachute had fallen.

Bad shot or not, Redmond probably would have hit him. A lucky release and he gets him in the back, or even the neck. He would've toppled into the water. Myca would have had to make a choice between saving his life or going after Redmond before he let another arrow go. Not to mention the fact that she pulled him up here. One ugly, brutal shove from her and he would have gone back under. He wouldn't have resurfaced.

"You could've killed me," he says slowly, looking up at her. Her hand stills over his back.

"I said us until the end, remember?"

"Is this not the end?"

Myca looks around again, lips pursed. He watches her force it up into a smile, albeit a grim one. "No," she says. "Not yet."

* * *

June 13th, 2215.

Aleron dreams about Myca the night he gets out of the arena and every night after that for two weeks straight.

They're all good and happy and warm until the last one, when she dies in his arms again.

And this time, she takes Aleron with her.

* * *

June 24th, 2215.

Aleron loved Myca Azarine like a sister, like the only best friend he ever had, even though he put a trident through her chest and out her back.

He doesn't get invited to the funeral, but he still goes. If Auden and Palmer weren't by his side he wouldn't dare. He wouldn't be able to look her parents in the eyes, or anyone else there for that matter. They saw all the same things he did from an outside perspective. He didn't expect to get an eleven. He didn't expect the arena to be built for them so much so that they had to ruin the Careers before the Games had really even begun, knowing it wouldn't last.

He didn't expect to be standing across from her when it was only the two of them last, half the arena dead at their hands.

The only thing he knew for sure was that he was going to beat her, as much as he loathed it.

* * *

June 30th, 2215.

If Myca Azarine was the only person he ever had, then he has a job to do.

Aleron finds himself back at the Academy a week after his return. He knew he would wind up here eventually - it was his home for the past two years, and there's still work to do here.

A lot more than even he imagined.

He finds Sherina Azarine in the hall outside of the showers, hair still damp and face red, he suspects, from the steam that's seeping into the hallway from underneath the door. If only that was the full extent of it. She scrubs at her face, knuckles catching along the soft edges of her cheek.

When she looks up at him her eyes are blue, as blue as Myca's were, made brighter by the tears gathering in her eyes.

It's a dead end in the opposite direction - through Aleron is the only way to safety. If that's what you want to call it. He sees Sherina realize this a second after he does, as her body clams up. He recognizes that position. It's defensive. A method to holding yourself back in the face of a potentially dangerous situation. It's what they're all taught in training.

"I'm sorry," he says. Her hands close into fists. "I didn't—"

"I know."

He trails off, pressing his lips together. To think for once in his life he had an entire speech planned out, a direction in which he was headed. Sherina takes a step closer, lead foot faltering in a way that almost no one else would notice.

"My sister loved you," she says. "You were her best friend. She always told me that she didn't want to go in with you."

_But I have to, 'cause Sher doesn't want to. Not really_. That's what Myca had said to him, an hour after the Choosing Ceremony. She was a year younger. Unwilling. Compassionate.

"Auden says you're good," he tells her. "That if you keep up with it they'll almost certainly pick you next year."

Her lip trembles. He can see it now that she's gotten closer. It hasn't even been a month since he held her dying sister in his arms, her blood running rivers through the cracks in his palms. He remembers the splash of the trident into the water, sinking into the depths of the caves behind them. He remembers that noise because he chooses to forget Myca's dying gasps.

"I don't wanna go," she whispers.

_You don't have to _is what he doesn't say aloud but the words must be in the air around them, as she collapses sobbing and shaking into his arms. It's a release. A relief in the way her shoulders collapse, her fingers clawing at the arms of his shirt.

A safety, standing there in the arms of her sister's murderer.

* * *

November 18th, 2215.

Carden's never been to a funeral before.

He's just never lost anyone. They had Noelle's long before he got home, almost two weeks in fact. He would've gone if they had waited.

He didn't really know Florian. He spoke to him in a few short sentences after he won - nothing about Ulpia or Mettius. Carden didn't want to risk bringing that up. He had come this year too, to assist Ari and Deidra, though they hadn't needed it with the ultimate results. He wishes he had spent even a bit more time knowing him, as futile as it may have been.

Aurora was upset - visibly so. Keva hadn't stopped crying since they got here. Both Deidra and Ari had an arm wrapped around one another, silent.

Everyone else lingered, and watched, and wished to say something they couldn't.

If Ilona hadn't died none of this would have happened. Everyone knew about them, or rather the lack of them. It was the infamous what could have been, the thing they only talked about when the doors were closed.

She was buried in Four. He had no family in Two. They were burying him in the Capitol.

He belonged in Four with her, but Carden wouldn't dare say that.

In the worst sort of sense they died because of each other. She was two blocks out from Florian's apartment when they pulled her body out of the twisted wreckage of the car. No one had to ask why. He slit himself open and let himself bleed because he wouldn't live without her. He was still bleeding when his housekeeper had found him.

He tightens his arm around Aurora when she starts shaking. He can't help but look around, avoiding the worst of it.

His eyes find Aleron, predictably, and then land on the casket anyway.

He wills himself to stop thinking it.

* * *

January 3rd, 2216.

District Eight is the only one that winds up untouched by Aleron and Myca's hands. Somehow that seems like a small miracle.

Messena or Antoni had to have gotten at least one of them, maybe the weaker of the two in the girl, but he has no idea what happened to the boy. Drowned, probably, like the rest of them. That's the option he settles on while he's staring at the boy's family from across the crowd, even if it's nowhere near true. Drowning may have been kinder than whatever they could have done to him.

There's no one here to be angry at him. For having an unfair advantage, maybe, but his birthright is not his fault.

He's sitting in the Justice Building twiddling his fucking thumbs while Auden talks with the Mayor and Psyche flirts with the Mayor's wife when Carden sits down next to him with a thump. There wasn't much room on the bench to begin with, but it didn't appear that Carden cared.

"What?" he asks tiredly, a minute later. He can't understand how he's so tired and still moving.

"I didn't say anything."

"But you're sitting here."

"That I am," Carden confirms. "Is it wrong that I want a victor my age to talk to?"

"What's wrong with the others?"

"Ari doesn't like to come within twenty feet of me, and Hayden doesn't want to talk to anyone _but _Ari."

"Isn't Lissy seventeen, too? Or going on it?"

"Sure. But she's fucking terrifying. She's so, so—"

Carden waves his hands around wildly and Psyche looks over at the pair of them, raising an eyebrow, before the Mayor's wife puts a hand on her arm again. Carden continues with his antics until he nearly hits himself in the face, coming a hair too close for his liking.

"So _terrifying_!" he decides on, repeating the word once again. "Dude, have you seen how fucking little and murderous she is? Does she not terrify you?"

The difference between them is that Lissy Mullhern could probably body-slam Carden to the ground if she really wanted to. He has no reason to be terrified of that himself. That's the one good thing, about being a shitty, neglected kid from Four instead of a scrawny Eight from the factory quarter.

"Do I have a choice in this?" he asks slowly. Carden already has his phone out.

"What's your number?"

He stares. So long, apparently, that Carden reaches over his lap and goes rooting around in _his _pocket, pulling out _his _phone with a grand flourish.

"Guess you'll just have to call me then."

"Great," he deadpans. Another number he's never going to call on a phone he only remembers to charge a rough two days a week. Carden hands the phone back to him with a grin, a grin that is almost as terrifying as the way he just described poor little Lissy Mullhern.

He's only home three days from the Victory Tour when he finds himself calling that number he was never going to call.

It's longer than Carden probably thought he would last.

* * *

July 4th, 2216.

Carden only hates one thing more than he hates parties, and that honor belongs to the lovely President Serfine Tremblay.

He gets it: one-upping the deceased President Snow couldn't be an easy task, surely, but she sure was making sure the job was done well. New or old, all of the Gamemakers feared her very presence. The victor's dreaded their yearly talks with her. Everything was bigger, better, all because of her; that included the parties she insisted on throwing after each years Games. They got more and more ridiculous each year, it seemed. That was the only thing he had picked up in his two years of mandatory attendance.

All of the victor's were here, losing themselves in the crowd. Or just losing themselves.

He was trying himself. Just leaning into the pleasant side of tipsy. Mentoring had been about as fun as he'd expected - he'd rather Glisten Bramwell rise out of her grave in One and completely cut him open again then re-watch Sadie and Persis' deaths over and over.

He's losing himself perfectly fine when the bastard sits down next to him at the bar.

He slides into the stool next to Carden's and puts a hand on his back; it's so warm and clammy that something unpleasant crawls up his spine at the simple action.

That's the last thing he really remembers, for a long while.

He's an idiot. The stupidest person alive. He doesn't know who slips what into his drink. Not what direction it comes from, not how long it takes him to down the rest of it all while the man makes conversation with him. Polite things, idle things. His eyes are saying otherwise. He's seventeen. He still has time before the Capitol forces him into it.

There's a lot of conversation, in those next few minutes. He doesn't participate in much of it. Something about a car and being too heavily intoxicated and taking him home. Home. He looks up from where he's been swaying in his chair just in time for the man to pull him out of it and onto the floor; he nearly collapses.

He's already going down - Carden yanks his arm out of the man's grip and throws himself into the crowd.

He moves the same way he moved in the Games. Terrified, unsure of where his feet are going to land, searching for something to save him. And just like in the Games he must be terribly good at hiding it, because no one seems to care. All of the strangers slipping around him are parting like the break in Eight's river, just behind the village.

He takes another three steps forward and walks headlong into a wall.

The wall grabs him back, a fact his brain can't quite wrap around. A set of hands locks around both of his upper arms and he stumbles, blinking frantically. Everything is spinning.

"God, how trashed are you?" the wall asks. The wall sounds a lot like Aleron. He blinks again and thinks he can make out a sliver of dark eyes, even darker hair.

"You are too small to be drinking this much, Eight," the wall who is apparently Aleron says, and Carden almost opens his mouth to retort when he nearly swallows his own tongue, choking. He thought they drugged him— fuck, _fuck,_ did they poison him? Is he dying?

"Aleron," he chokes, and finally grabs back at his arms, trying to clutch them as tight as he can. It's not very easy, when he suddenly has six hands and Aleron has eight arms.

"That's my name," Aleron says flatly, unimpressed. "Listen, just because you drunk dialed me in March to tell me you missed the sound of my voice does not mean this is going to be a regularly recurring thing."

He wants to open his mouth, something along the lines of _I wasn't that drunk_, _alright _but that sounds too much like honesty, and then a hand lands on his back. Warm. Warmer than it was before. He nearly retches and stumbles forward into Aleron's chest, shoving them both backwards.

"Jesus, calm down," Aleron says, but he hears another voice. Something worse.

He hears, "I'm sorry, Mr. Grenados. We called his driver, he should be here shortly to take him back to the apartments. We can walk him outside; no need to be inconvenienced."

They didn't. They didn't. "Aleron," he manages, again, but it sounds weak at best.

"Yeah, one second," Aleron mutters. "Listen to me, stupid. Drink some water when you get in the car. I'll find Aurora and tell her you went back."

"No," he chokes out. "No, don't—"

Aleron is still holding onto his arms, so he knows the hand that curls around the inside of his elbow is wrong. Bad. If this guy takes him outside he's not going to be strong enough to get away from him. Not again. He tangles his fingers as best as he can in Aleron's shirt. He's not going to let go.

"Did something," he slurs, and prays that it's loud enough. "Don't let them—"

He breaks off, retching again. Sooner or later something is going to come up.

"Carden," Aleron says, almost asks, and he nearly cries at the sound of his own name. Aleron's still holding onto him.

"We can take him," the man says, and he sobs. They're going to fucking take him. That'll be the end of that. Carden Kenmore, ladies and gentlemen. Fate signed sealed and delivered.

His knees give out.

He knows it's going to happen a second before it does but doesn't get the chance to warn Aleron, or anyone, before it happens. Aleron's arms save him from crashing into the floor and drag him back up, until his face is smashed into the front of Aleron's shoulder. He keeps it there. He can't see, anyway.

"Carden," he repeats, and then, "I fucking got him, alright? Keep your hands where they are."

More hysterical sobs bubble out, and this time one of Aleron's arms curl around his back, holding him a little tighter. Closer.

"Mr. Grenados—"

"The next time you extend that hand I'll fucking cut it off," Aleron snaps. Anger. Building anger. Carden has never been so happy to hear someone sound so angry. "I've got you, okay? You're not going anywhere."

Aleron is talking to him. Aleron isn't going to let anything happen to him. That's good, because he can feel his grasp slipping. His brain, his hands. Nothing's holding on quite as tightly anymore, no matter how desperately he wants to. It's fading.

"Carden, stay awake."

He wants to. He so desperately wants to stay awake, to look up at Aleron and know that he's well and truly safe.

But he can't. And maybe that's because he's never going to be.

"Carden," Aleron says, and he holds onto that. Keeps it close.

Hopes that his brain cherishes that last bit of safety, as it fails him for good.

* * *

July 5th, 2216.

"He's awake."

Aleron finally snaps himself out of his almost sleep-induced fog, staring blankly at the far windowsill. He couldn't even get his eyes to look out of it. It's still dark anyway, not quite dawn. He can make out nothing except the faint lights of the city, far below them.

Auden closes the door to the apartment silently and stands there, pinching the bridge of his nose with a tired sigh.

"Is he alright?"

He shrugs. "Didn't stick around to ask. Aurora's got enough to deal with - the President's there, and the police. I'll take a stab and say he's fairing. He probably doesn't remember any of it."

Aleron wishes he had the privilege to forget the mess that last night was. He's still fixating on the fact of how limp Carden had been in his arms after security had finally gotten a hold of the guy, after Ari had shown up and knocked three of his front teeth down his throat in the middle of the ballroom.

He remembers how frantic Aurora had looked before she had realized for the first time that Aleron wasn't letting go of Carden no matter who told him to. The street had been dark and cold by the time they had forced their way outside, Aurora and Auden urging him towards the car carrying Carden's unconscious body, Ariadne with her bloody knuckles. Lissy and Hayden both spewing profanities under their breath. The newcomer Aparia Blue huddled on the sidewalk tucked under one of Solaire's arms, silent and shivering, regarding what her new life of victory held for her.

"What do you think would have happened to him?" he dares to ask, finally. It's the one thing he hasn't allowed himself to think about.

Auden perches on the arm of the chair next to him and when his fingers close around Aleron's shoulders they're weak at best. Not a word often synonymized with the two of them.

"I don't think they would have killed him."

That's what he was dreading. Death is easier; that's what they've all discovered in their times as victors. Anything else than that is worse. Surviving after any level of trauma is nearly impossible, let alone—

"Go to bed," Auden says. "He's fine. You were there. Don't worry any more than that."

He was there this time. But next time it might be someone else. Next time he might not be.

And if he's not, he doesn't want to think about what may happen.

* * *

July 6th, 2216.

Carden is pressing his hands into his ribs to feel his own pulse.

He could remember how slow it got. How loud it was but how it had slowed down along with the speed of his own brain. It was one of the only things he could remember - how completely helpless he had been. How close he had come—

He heads down to the fourth floor somewhere in the vicinity of two in the morning and stands outside the door praying it's not Auden's, arms hugging himself. Fingers pressed into his side. Thump, thump. A normal pace. He knocks repeatedly, a quick and even two dozen times, at least. Almost leaves until he hears soft footfalls approaching from the other side, and at the noise is holding his breath. His pulse slows again and speeds back up.

Aleron opens the door still rubbing sleep from the corner of his eyes, taking Carden in with eyes that must be too blurry to properly make him out. His mouth goes drier than he thinks it must have ever gone before, and no matter how many times he swallows it doesn't get any better. Any single stupid thought in his brain flees the premises.

"My eyes are up here, you know," Aleron finally says, after Carden spends a very long, awkward minute staring at him. Or staring at his chest, rather, which felt like it had less pressure attached to it.

"Fuck you," he says. "Your eyes are a full head above mine. It hurts my neck."

Aleron cracks a smile. "Glad this hasn't diminished your stellar personality."

"If the Games couldn't, guess I'm stuck with it for life," he mutters. He almost wishes he could feel something else, that he could roll himself into a ball and sob his eyes out, but for what? Nothing happened to him. Not really.

Because Aleron was there to stop it.

That's what he came down here for at such an awful time. To thank him, he guesses, for doing something when no one else was going to be able to.

But not just for that. For being there in the first place. For talking to him when it seems like no one else wants to in their varying quests to forget the past. For answering his phone calls at increasingly weird times and for being one of the only people at all.

That's it. Just in general. For existing.

"Are you okay?" Aleron asks, so he lunges up and kisses him.

Decidedly not okay.

Aleron makes a single noise, a muffled sign of surprise against his lips, and that's all he gets out. He drags him down, locks his hands around his neck to keep him there. He really is too fucking tall— too fucking much of everything, really. But the feel of his lips has made his heart leap into his throat and into the tips of his fingers, which is better than anything else he's felt in the past twenty-four hours.

"Okay, hold on," Aleron insists, backing up. His eyes are a little unfocused and Carden could throw up. "Hold on a second, calm down— are you okay right now?"

"Don't," he snaps, and curses the unsteadiness in his own voice. "Don't treat me like I'm glass. Don't treat me like Aurora's treating me right now because I can't fucking handle it—"

Aleron grabs him by the arm and yanks him further into the room. The door slams shut behind him, plunging everything into an inky black. He digs two fingers into his ribs again, even against Aleron's pull. He doesn't have to, anyway. His heart is everywhere but the place it should be. He knows it and Aleron can probably tell.

"Look at me," Aleron says, so he squeezes his eyes shut. He can't fucking do any of this right now. Shouldn't have been so stupid in the first place, shouldn't have come down here, shouldn't have kissed him. He should have just stayed in bed staring at the ceiling, where he fits.

"For fuck's sake," Aleron mutters, and then kisses him again.

He's so surprised he nearly wheels away but doesn't quite get the chance. His back nudges up against the door, one of Aleron's hands curled and digging into the line of his hip.

Oh, okay, his brain thinks, and then spirals away right down the tube. He's fine with this. More than fine with this, in fact, and he's barely got any leeway but he still tugs himself away. There's maybe half an inch between their faces. If he had a brain he'd be thinking about the stupid cliche of drowning in someone's eyes.

"Are we doing this?" he manages, voice cracking. It only helps that Aleron looks about as bewildered as he must.

"You don't want me to treat you like glass, right?" he asks, so Carden nods. "Shut up, then."

For once in his life, he can do that.

* * *

July 7th, 2216.

Aleron wakes up in the morning only because Auden forces him to. He sits at the breakfast table and stares into his plate with an intensity reserved only for the way Carden looked at him in the early hours of the morning.

It's only been six hours, give or take, since he left. Since he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth and fled back up to the eighth floor.

Aleron sits at the table and watches the numbers on the elevator tick down. One by one the victors are trickling away for the year until they're called to return for the next.

Finally he sees the number start from eight and gets to his feet. Presses the down button on the elevator.

When it stops, when it opens, he knows it's going to be Carden. Somehow his breath still gets caught in his throat at the mere sight of him. He doesn't look like he slept any after leaving Aleron last night.

He kisses him from the fourth floor all the way to the ground, until it feels like he can't breathe. He's never treasured a lack of air in his lungs so deeply before. They don't speak a single word until Carden pulls back, lips still brushing.

"See you next year," he murmurs.

Carden lets go of him. The doors open.

He takes off.

* * *

July 16th, 2216.

It's over a week before his phone rings.

It's after midnight. Carden rolls over in bed and presses the phone to his ear without bothering to look at the screen, wiggling back into his previous position, back into the comfortable warmth.

He doesn't say anything. Doesn't need to.

"See you next year?" Aleron asks. "Really?"

He starts laughing.

* * *

June 14th, 2217.

He gets the call just shy of three in the morning. He drops the phone twice before he successfully answers.

He almost doesn't expect it to be Carden because of the time, but he never gets any calls. The voice on the other end, however, is so not-Carden that he sits there for a very long moment just listening to it, trying to wrap his brain around the sound, trying to connect it to the person he knows. It's hysterical, a never-ending babble, no actual words distinguishable from the mess that is the rest of it.

"Carden," he says eventually, if only to get him to shut up for a second. "English."

"Fuck— fuck, I can't—"

"Breathe?" he suggests.

There's a sob, then, which actually wakes him up. He hears the sound crack and break, intensify.

"Carden," he says again, more uselessly.

"He's dead," he sobs. "He had a— a, fuck, a f-fucking heart attack."

His stomach very awkwardly slides down the rest of his abdomen and out of his body, somehow, where it hits the floor with a very sickly wet thud. Three days ago, he recalls. Carden called him three days ago, middle of the day, odd for them. Told him they were taking his Dad to the clinic for chest pains. Nothing serious.

Nothing serious?

"Carden," he says for the third time, because that's apparently all he can fucking say. It's hard to conjure up anything else when all he can hear is him sobbing, some out of place commotion in the background. Voices rising and falling and Carden's awful heaving breaths directly into the receiver, Carden who called him of all people when he evidently shouldn't have.

There's a jostling, and then a female voice, just as terrible, "who is this?"

Not Aurora, which is the extent of random fucking people he knows from Eight, so his mother, maybe, or one of his sisters. Someone who doesn't know him back.

He has no idea how much Carden has told them. Probably nothing. That's about as much as he's worth.

Aleron hangs up, keeps the phone in his hands, and nearly calls back.

He doesn't.

* * *

June 17th, 2217.

"You hung up on my mom," Carden says quietly, accusingly. It's the first time they've talked _since_.

"Sorry," he murmurs, and Carden barks out a little laugh that lasts all of two seconds before he's sobbing again.

He cries himself to sleep, Aleron knows, only because he never hangs up this time.

* * *

June 26th, 2217.

He hears the name and swears he blacks out. The seventeen's ripple outward. He goes elsewhere.

When Carden comes back down to planet earth there's someone who isn't his brother standing on the stage before him, seventeen years old but entirely different. He finds Arryl still in the seventeen area, eyes fixated between his feet. It was supposed to be him with that name. It sounded like him, but it's not.

He starts breathing again.

The reaping ends with as little fanfare as it usually does, and Aurora lets him rush off the stage and into the crowd without a single attempt to stop him. The crowd swallows him but he keeps going until he's halfway back, far past the thirteen's and Colette's wide-eyed, frightened stare. Arryl's looking the other way when he finds him, but the gaggle of friends he's surrounded by realize one by one until he slams into his brother and wraps his arms around him.

Arryl stumbles back into the crowd before he has the sense to hold on back, someone pushing them both back into the clear.

Carden's going to cry. He's going to honest to God burst into tears in the middle of the fucking reaping pen because he thought—

"You thought the same thing I did, didn't you?" Arryl whispers. Carden's not so sure he'll ever be able to let go of him. He heard the name and thought _I'm going to watch him die, they won't let him win too _and he's still thinking it right now despite himself. He's got one more year, and then he's out. He's safe for now.

"You gotta calm down," Arryl says, sounding very unperturbed about this whole hugging business. Carden didn't think it would last this long. His breathing is past ragged, coming out in awkward, drawn-out gasps that sound way too close to sobs for his liking. There's a hand wrapped in his shirt that's not Arryl's now, too - Colette, he suspects, having followed his trail over here.

"I'm sorry," he manages weakly. He feels like if he lets go someone's going to take Arryl away from him.

"You don't need to be sorry. You gotta go."

"I can't—"

"You don't have a choice. I'll make take care of mom, okay, and Fae too. Just don't worry about us."

"And who's going to take care of you?"

"You will, when you get back," Arryl offers, without missing a beat. "And bring Aryn Walcott back with you if you feel so inclined."

He nods, blinking the tears away. Arryl squeezes him again, and he keeps breathing. Fae's been out for years now, after next year Arryl will be too, and then all he has to worry about is Colette, and he's not going to let anyone take her. They'll have to get over his dead body first.

He may not come back with Aryn Walcott, but he's coming back to something.

That's what matters.

* * *

June 28th, 2217.

He finds him, like he always seems to do, just before the chariots.

Carden's not looking at him when he does. He's not looking at anything, really, just staring blankly at the wall.

Aleron's tried calling him. He's only picked up a handful of times.

He approaches, and Carden sits unmoving on the bench outside one of the stylist's rooms until he sits down next to him, and only then does he blink a few times.

"Aryn Walcott," he says.

"What?'

"Aryn Walcott," Carden says again, and this time he washes away a lump in his throat when he swallows. "That's the name of the kid I'm mentoring. I thought it was going to be my brother."

Aryn, Arryl... what difference does it make, really?

"It's not," he says quietly. "He's at home."

At home, but his dad isn't. Is it any better, at home? Aleron wants to ask but turns out he's a fucking coward, you see. Can't ask, won't ask, won't hold his hand either or do... anything, really, that he thought the two of them would be doing. The idea of losing him is too strong to even try it. He hasn't seen him since the last Games, didn't think he'd see him at this one if only Aurora had had someone else to mentor with her.

He has a lot he wants to do.

Can't do any of it now.

* * *

July 7th, 2217.

Aleron won't leave him alone.

Carden's not stupid, okay, much as people say he is. He knows why.

The Eight's are dead already. They died within six hours of each other, across the arena. Aryn got his throat ripped out by something shadowy that had dropped from the trees and he was gone. Carden had watched every second of it without really seeing anything.

One of the Four's was still alive, too, but it didn't appear that Aleron cared very much. All of his attention and concern was on Carden, and maddening as it was as he couldn't tell him to do otherwise. If he had been sensible he wouldn't have come at all. Aurora had wanted him to stay home with his family and mourn like a proper human being.

He didn't know how, really, and he had missed Aleron's stupid face.

That's all it boils down to.

Aleron's stupid face is currently face-down asleep in his bed, though, after spending four hours in here talking to him, and Carden doesn't realize how much of a problem that is until he tries to go to sleep himself. He manages to lay there for all of two minutes before his skin starts crawling. He can't stop himself from glancing over at Aleron, legs tangled in the covers, spread out over so much space it's a wonder Carden hasn't been knocked onto the floor.

He sits back up, but the feeling doesn't dissipate. He doesn't think he can sleep like this, not wondering if something going to happen. Aleron wouldn't _do _anything, would he? Carden doesn't think so. He's not Rafos.

And _oh, _that's what this is about.

"What time is it?" Aleron mumbles, and he jolts, fumbling to turn the bedside table clock around. It's too bright for him to sleep normally.

"Just after one."

"Why are you still awake?"

Because he feels like he's going to throw up. Because he's going to wake up with a knife to his throat again. Because Rafos is going to win this time.

Aleron rolls closer and puts a hand on his arm. He flinches, and Aleron pulls his hand away like he's been burned, propping himself up on his elbow.

"Carden," he says slowly, but he can't work up the nerve to look over. He's still contemplating the thought of running to the bathroom to throw up into the toilet, whatever would even come up. It wouldn't be that much. His stomach has been rolling since they found his dad dead, and it hasn't stopped. Eating hasn't gone so well.

"The last time I fell asleep next to someone I woke up and they were trying to kill me," he gets out. He expects something other than cold stone silence - outrage, or exasperation. Aleron isn't going to hurt him, and they both know that. He feels a different way, though, and he can't shake that feeling, no matter how desperately he wants to. It's not like people have been lining up to sleep in the same room as him, exactly. He never expected this to be a problem.

Then again, he never expected Aleron to even be here.

"You know I'm not going to hurt you," Aleron says quietly, but it's not a question.

"I know."

Silence, again. He's not sure if he wants a hug or if he wants to run away. Opening the door will expose both of them to Aurora still out in the living room, and he didn't sneak Aleron in here for nothing.

"Do you want me to leave?" Aleron asks. There's no mention of Aurora being tipped off.

"Would you hate me if I say yes?"

"Why would I ever hate you?"

Lots of people do. Rafos' family, for one. Every single person in all three Career Districts except Aleron and Auden, maybe, for what he did. He hates himself for not taking his dad to the doctor sooner. He should have taken him.

Aleron leans in, painfully slow, and kisses the side of his bare shoulder. "Come down to Four for breakfast when you wake up."

"I never said I wanted you to go."

Aleron's already halfway to his feet, but stops. Carden holds his breath.

"You won't sleep if I stay."

"I won't ever get over it if you leave."

Carden wants nothing more than to get over it, truly. He wants to be able to go to sleep with Aleron in here and to sneak past Auden downstairs and do the same thing like he's stupidly rebellious and doesn't care. He knows he's cowering, shielding himself with the dark and the blankets kicked up around his legs, but he can't make himself any bigger. He's scared to.

Aleron nudges him. "Lay down."

He does so only because there's no other alternative now that Aleron's between him and the escape route. He wiggles his way under the blankets and curls up on his side, as small as he can get. It's harder to hit a smaller target, and a lot harder to kill one.

Aleron lays back down beside him and shifts over until they're face to face, staring at each other.

"Go to sleep," Aleron murmurs. "I'll stay awake until you do."

Aleron stares and stares and stares, every so often punctuated with a slow, tired blink. Despite that, Carden believes him wholeheartedly. He's going to stay awake so that Carden doesn't feel as if anything bad is going to happen. If Aleron's awake Aleron can protect him, and he'll be none the wiser when they're both finally sleeping. Maybe, just maybe, this could go well.

He falls asleep, finally, with the ghost of Aleron's lips on his forehead and one of his hands stroking very slowly up and down his back, feather-light. It still doesn't make any sense that he can be so gentle.

And when he wakes up, Aleron is still there asleep beside him, and nothing bad has happened.

* * *

July 1st, 2218.

Aleron doesn't have nightmares about the Games, just all the things around it.

Carden doesn't seem to have many either, but being in the Capitol can screw with your head. There's a reason the whole lot of them look a little more tired than usual, walk with a slouch in their step whenever a Capitolite isn't looking.

But even when night falls he very rarely is able to catch up on his sleep.

He knows Carden is sitting up behind him in the dark before he even properly opens his eyes. Everything is hazy, the bright lights from the city below still faintly neon even through the drawn shades. He can see the silhouette of him, knees drawn up to his chest, chin propped up on them.

"Carden," he murmurs, and prods at his arm. Surprise surprise, he doesn't move an inch, but Aleron lays still there for a very long thirty seconds, more than long enough for Carden to recognize his presence. He sits up, slowly, a hand curled around his elbow. He's staring very blankly at the far wall, a non-existent point above the television. Neither of them say anything, but he feels him lean a little closer, arm relaxing under his touch.

"How do you deal with seven?" he whispers, eventually, and anyone else would ask but Aleron doesn't bother. "I close my eyes sometimes, and the three is bad enough. I can't get the images out of my head."

He can't either, most of the time. He's just lucky enough to not have nightmares about them.

"How do you deal with _seven_?" Carden repeats, finally turning to look at him, and his eyes are just shiny enough that he can't stand it, leaning in to press a kiss against his jaw. He doesn't like when Carden looks like anything less than that of a candle flame, bright and strong and true, all of the things that seem to fit him and only him.

Aleron curls closer to him with the knowledge that he probably won't be going back to sleep, but he's fine with that.

* * *

July 15th, 2218.

Carden's going to let go of his hand the second the elevator stops.

He knows that because that's how it's always gone. That's not going to change.

The number above the door flicks from two to one.

"Hey," Carden says. "I love you."

He doesn't move. Aleron can't even force himself to look down because he may actually throw up if he does. The elevator flickers down to the ground floor and shudders to a stop.

Carden stretches up to kiss him on the cheek. "See you next year," he says, an echo of all of the previous years. Unlike those years, Aleron can't even make himself smile at the familiarity of it all, the casual lilt to his voice as he finishes his sentence.

The door closes, and Carden leaves, before he can say anything back.

* * *

July 18th, 2218.

"You didn't let me say it back," he says into the phone.

A beat. And then, "I don't see how you being too slow is my problem."

Carden's smiling, he can tell. Aleron wanted to die in the few seconds it took him to dial his number.

"Love you," Carden says, far too easily.

"Love you too."

He's still smiling, and Aleron wishes he could see it, but he's not that lucky. Maybe one day he will be.

He falls asleep with the phone still to his ear, and considers that good enough for not.

* * *

March 1st, 2219.

"We're pregnant," Auden tells him over dinner, a dinner that he absolutely did not make himself. Auden can't cook for shit.

He looks over the table, balancing several carrots on his fork. "Funny. You don't look it."

Palmer produces a peach from nowhere and throws it at him from the kitchen island. It lands in the middle of his plate and scatters slices of carrot in ten different directions.

It's not the worst dinner he's ever been to.

* * *

July 10th, 2219.

Aleron is uncharacteristically quiet, even for Aleron.

Carden doesn't like that, first of all. There's an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach just from watching him, eyes glued firmly to the television screen. They've hardly spoken; they try not to, usually, not out in the open, but he gets the feeling Auden knows, anyway, and he's the only other person anywhere near. It's not like the avoxes are going to tell.

"I got my first appointment today," Aleron finally says. They don't look at each other.

"Appointment?"

"Yeah."

"Do you know who it is?"

"No. Auden's heard of her, though. Says she's younger, at least. Not bad looking."

The President's never called on him for such a thing. The whole fiasco three years ago was probably enough to bide him even more years out of all of that. Aleron's twenty-two now, though. He had started to think...

What had he started to think? That it would never happen?

"Y'know, if people knew about us, I don't think they'd be doing this," he says quietly.

"I know."

Nothing. Not an offer of alright, Carden, we'll go public or anything else of the sort. He's so fucking tired of not hearing anything like that, of Aleron never looking him in the eye when it's so much as brought up. Everyone knows about him, so what's the deal if they know about _them_?

"Are you that ashamed of me?" he asks finally. "Look, I know I'm far from incredible and definitely not Perfect Specimen A like you are, but—"

"What?" Aleron interrupts. "Why would you even say that?"

"I don't know, maybe because it's been _three fucking years _and the only person who knows is my sister because she went through my phone history when I wouldn't tell her - because _you _told me not to. And when I told you she found out you sounded like you wanted to die."

Aleron's looking at him, now, an oddly blank look in his eyes. He shoves his legs out of the way, gangly ass things they are, and gets to his feet. He's not good at sitting when he's mad.

"I'm not ashamed of you."

"Look, I know not everyone's like, going to be happy about this, okay? And I know we're fucking terrified of getting torn apart, but it's been three fucking years! Everyone knows about _you _so what's wrong with me?" he repeats. "Sue me for being so fucking exhausted about all of it. I feel like I'm living two lives or some shit."

"I think you're being slightly over-dramatic."

"Fuck you," he spits. "Bye."

He doesn't even get to the door - again, Aleron's _gangly ass legs _catch up to him before he even gets within five feet of the thing and then there's a vice tight grip around his elbow, quickly stopping his progress. Now matter how hard he pulls he doesn't even gain an inch.

"Where are you going?" Aleron asks.

"I don't know, home? Games are over, Eight's fucked as per usual, you're going on your fucking appointment or whatever. I should probably leave anyway."

"I don't want you to leave."

"Tell that to someone else, then, 'cause it sure seems like it when it's just the two of us."

"Carden—"

"God, stop," he insists. "Just fucking let go of me."

"No."

"Fuck you!" he says again, but it's weaker this time. He really is just so tired, drained and emptied out to the very bottom. Someone ought to plug him back into something that has a little bit of juice left.

"Talk to me," Aleron offers.

"I was talking to you!" he yells, and then finally manages to rip his arm away for good. "I'm fucking done now, I don't care anymore, I'm sick of feeling like I don't matter and that I never will. Just go to your fucking appointment or whatever you have to do; screw her, if you want, because I really don't care."

He regrets the words as soon as they come out because he does care, always will even if he wanted to stop, and something flips over in Aleron's brain. He sees a shift in his eyes. For all Aleron's done he's never once been scared of him when he knows other people certainly are but something not unlike fear trickles into his veins, then, an icy worry all the way up into his throat.

This is the Aleron that killed Myca, not the one after that collapsed holding onto her bleeding corpse, unable to let go.

"I guess I will, then," he says flatly. That emotionless, trainee-level careful tread in his eyes is back; Carden hasn't seen that for a very long time. "You just made it really fucking easy for me."

He fumbles back for the door-handle and practically launches himself into the hallway, tugging the door shut behind him to close Aleron alone in the sitting room.

The elevator feels too far away, his floor, Eight, everything back home...

And Aleron, most of all.

The fear wasn't of him. It was of losing him.

And it feels very final all of a sudden.

* * *

July 10th, 2219. II.

Aleron doesn't remember the name of his appointment because he doesn't ask.

He doesn't ask because she picks him up from the center and three blocks down the road he's hyperventilating in her passenger seat and trying not to cry.

She turns around and drops him back off, some five minutes later.

* * *

July 11th, 2219.

The train station is far too empty for his state of mind.

Most of the victors have left already. The Twelve's are even getting ready to pack up and head out today, the Capitol-chosen mentor and their newest victor. Eira's looked dead behind the eyes about as often as he did in the immediate days after, so there's hope there.

Aurora keeps looking at him in a way that makes him want to scream. He won't, but he wants to. He's sulking like a petulant child, and it's not her fault.

There are a few straggling paparazzi and cameramen ready to capture that though, the no doubt completely sullen, upset look on his face.

They'll just think it's post-Games upset, the pain that comes with losing two more tributes. They definitely won't assume it's because of one half-assed break-up from two people who aren't even publicly together because they can't be. Because of what could happen if they are.

He's beginning to think that Aurora knows, somehow. He got back from the fourth floor yesterday and slammed every door in the apartment three times over.

It'd be sort of silly if she didn't with how perceptive she is normally.

She turns around again and he's got the reply queued up on his lips - _I'm fine, Aurora, please stop asking me. No, I do not hate you. No, I don't want to talk. _She pauses, though. He bumps into her and rolls his one bag over her toes, but she pays it no mind, nodding behind him like she wants him to look.

He turns around as well, in time for Aleron to grab his arm and send the two of them stumbling away from Aurora purely on accident.

He gets one good look at Aleron's face - his panic-stricken, reddened, very upset face, before he leans down and kisses him.

Carden's brain hasn't shut down like that very first night, three years ago now, since then.

It does, conveniently, right now. Aleron's got a tight hold on him, one that says he's not planning on letting go anytime soon or possibly ever again, both hands creating indents in his skin wherever they touch, his forearms and then his shoulders, one hand finally settling on the side of his face. He just barely manages to pull back, putting any amount of distance between their faces.

"Are you insane?" he asks, to someone who does look quite insane. "Do you not realize how many fucking cameras—"

Aleron leans down and kisses him again, harder, more of a _please shut up_ than anything else. It takes him a second. Something rotates around in his brain, steadily chugging away again, and finally locks into place.

Oh, he thinks. _Oh._

The odd cameraman posted around the place has morphed into several dozen, all pointed directly at the two of them. The sounds of shutters snapping open and shut is drowning out everything else he could possibly hear but makes how bad Aleron is shaking even more noticeable. He wraps a hand around his arm to confirm that the earth itself isn't opening up around them. It's just him.

This is happening now. This is happening because Aleron just did it, and with how he's standing here he's effectively letting him do it alone.

He fists his other hand in the front of Aleron's shirt to drag him forward that last little bit, as close as they can get. It's never anything easy with him. He can never just do something in a small way.

Many people say the same thing about him.

He thinks it's Aleron's shaking that finally breaks them apart - he goes nowhere far, folding himself over to bury his face in the side of Carden's neck. He blinks a few times at the tremendous crowd that they've managed to gather. Aurora doesn't look nearly as surprised as he would have expected.

She definitely knew.

"I'm sorry," Aleron says, still hiding away. It's so quiet Carden can hardly hear him, wouldn't if he didn't sound so desperate. "God, I'm sorry, nothing happened last night, I swear—"

"I figured."

"Don't leave. I can't handle you leaving. Please don't leave."

Aleron really isn't going to let go of him, not now and... maybe not ever again, Carden realizes.

He really just fucking did this.

"You did all of this because I yelled at you," he says, slightly incredulous. Aleron's fingers twitch against his back, but he doesn't reappear.

"I did all of this because I don't want to lose you."

"And I don't want pictures of me crying in the fucking tabloids," he insists. His eyes are burning terribly; Aleron squeezes him and nearly takes the breath out of him in just one second as if that's supposed to help.

"Sorry. Don't leave."

"I won't," he says quietly, and kisses the side of his face, the only bit left exposed. Something inside him finally settles into place, a piece that's been in turmoil for a long three fucking years. Possibly since the Games, before he even met him. Something's always been wrong inside him, he just never knew what. It feels like that little something doesn't hurt so bad anymore.

He might still lose him for this, but at least they can say they tried.

He squeezes him back. He's shaking now too, so it's not nearly as strong.

"I'm not," he promises. "I'm not going anywhere."

* * *

July 12th, 2219.

"I didn't want to lose him," Aleron says. "It was never about people looking at us. It was about them pulling us apart."

Carden's holding his hand under the table. He's looking the President in the eye and somehow he doesn't feel terrified at all.

"We're shown the tapes of the seventy-fourth and seventy-fifth as cautionary tales. And we all know what happened to Ilona, in Four. After Florian. I wasn't going to let anyone do that to us."

There's something very terrifyingly beautiful in Carden's eyes when he chances a glance over.

The President, if anything, looks thoughtful. He expects repercussions for this, for their hiding and the secrets. For delaying all trains leaving from that damned station by at least an hour with what they pulled yesterday.

Instead, she changes his life.

She tells them all about the official documents she can have written up, the travel identification and papers so that they can visit each other once a month. She talks about the hopeful possibility of them being properly together one day, wherever they inevitably chose, and a life that he hadn't ever allowed himself to envision suddenly opens up. It's all his.

It's ruined, suddenly. Not what's his, but what someone else has lost. She opens up a life for them, and someone else's is gone.

She tells them that Eira is dead two minutes before they leave her office.

* * *

July 13th, 2219.

"What the _fuck_?" Ariadne shouts. "You two? C'mon, seriously?"

She grabs him by the shoulders, shakes him, and then moves onto Aleron. Hayden shakes her head.

"I tried to tell her, you know. Multiple times. Over two years. She never believed me."

And here he thought they were being _subtle._

* * *

July 14th, 2219.

"I fucking knew it," Arryl deadpans the second he walks in the door.

Faelin gives him a thumbs-up. Colette starts snickering. His mom comes over and gives him a hug that feels bigger than normal.

He misses Aleron already.

* * *

July 14th, 2219. II.

"I'm sorry for not telling you."

Auden looks at him, chewing his way thoughtfully through a mouthful of omelette. He looks back. "What makes you think I didn't know?"

"I— you didn't?"

"Oh, I did," Auden insists. "Contrary to popular belief Capitol technology only extends so far. The walls in-between our rooms on that floor are surprisingly thin."

He stares some more. Blinks a few times. "Oh my god?"

"I'm just saying—"

"No. Do not say anything else."

"You wanted to know."

"No," he repeats. "Never say anything, ever again." He groans into his hands. Auden's laughing, and he's still laughing when Aleron takes the rest of his food onto a plate and flees the train car entirely.

The worst part is that he's not here, but Aleron knows that if he was, Carden would be laughing too.

* * *

August 2nd, 2219.

Aleron's been in Eight for three days when it happens.

His mother went to do errands. His siblings all vacated. He was operating on the suspicion that they were being left alone, the two of them, on purpose. They hadn't been since Aleron had got here.

He had met so many people since arriving here that his brain was a whirlwind, and most of all it was how jarringly nice they had all been. It's just nice, hour after hour, and incredibly easy. He was expecting somewhat of a difficult challenge to convince these people that he wasn't some God-awful Career here to invade all of their lives. Carden's mother has given him more hugs in these past three days than he thinks he ever got from both his own parents combined over sixteen years.

It's all ruined quicker than he thought it could be.

_Ruined _is a strong way to put it, and not the correct one, either. A woman barges through the front door in hysterics, halfway sobbing and clutching her protruding stomach like something's about to come out of it in the next two seconds.

It's not two seconds. It's seventeen minutes.

They had a talk two days ago, him and Carden's mother, about what she does. Turns out half the people in this cesspool of a District can't afford the hospital whatsoever when it comes to this shit. She's not exactly a qualified doctor, they don't even have the schooling for that here, but she's as close to a qualified midwife as anyone is going to get. It helps that she knows her way around a needle - she sewed up one of his ripped shirts in about forty-seven seconds flat.

Carden had talked to him too, about how he helps her a lot. They have a back room set up for emergencies and everything, if it comes to that.

If he's being honest, Aleron only halfway believed him then.

After seventeen minutes, he believes him for real.

Aleron had just obeyed. He had gone and wrestled out their entire medical kit from the main floor bathroom, brought it back, and then gone upstairs and cleaned out the entire linen closet of extra towels when Carden had told him to. He had stood there and listened to the screaming and watched in some mixture of awe and absolute, unbridled horror.

And then seventeen minutes later, there's a baby in Carden's arms.

She's wailing, screaming right in his face, and Carden's not even flinching. He whirls, and Aleron has his hands out without thinking, before Carden gives him the baby. The woman is still weeping - he doesn't even think she's fully grasped what's happened. They're in the same boat there.

He doesn't know what Carden's doing, and he's sure as hell not looking to find out. The baby is wiggling in his arms, slippery as a fish. He's never held a baby in his goddamn life.

Maybe he should've brought that up sooner.

He ends up with her clutched against his chest, hovering but not actually looking. The only thing that's worse than all the blood and fluid he can feel seeping through his shirt is the thought of being responsible for dropping her.

"Is this why blood has never bothered you?" he manages, voice weak. Carden doesn't break from whatever it is he's doing until he's firmly finished. That's apparently where he got the steady hands from, too.

"Why?" Carden asks. "Does it bother you?"

"You're not real," he says flatly, and finally gets a small, if not slightly breathless, smile.

Everyone's stopped crying. The room is almost quiet again, if not for the strong and steady sounds of evened out breath, a strong pulse in a tiny body.

And Aleron doesn't know it then, but those seventeen minutes end up meaning everything.

* * *

August 21st, 2219.

A hurricane comes up the coast and washes away half the land leading up to the victor's village. The land that's left is flooded so severely there's no getting through.

The week that follows is a blur to Aleron, years later.

* * *

August 29th, 2219.

The hand that wakes him up is gentle, now-familiar, but insistent.

"Aleron," Palmer says. "Wake up."

His arms are fucking numb, what else is new. The baby is still fast asleep in the crook of them, tucked away. That's how they've been sleeping, lately. Baby in his arms or wedged between the two of them on the bed. The bassinet was down on the main floor, half-built, instructions scattered haphazardly on the floor.

Who knows where the fuck it is now.

"Aleron," she says again, but he hears it too. "I think—"

He hands her the baby, watches the tiny little thing disappear into the curve of her arms. It already looks like he fits there in a way he doesn't belong in Aleron's arms, no blood relation. He's too small, four or five pounds at the very most. Too fucking early, if you ask him, but survivable.

And now there's a boat. He can hear it.

He stumbles from the bedroom and down the hall. The stairs are still half-submerged but he can see the receding lines, now. The waters haven't gone down much, but maybe just enough for someone to get through, now, if a boat's headed this way. He climbs down, carefully, continuing until the water reaches just below his knees and he doesn't trust his footing so much anymore. His head is spinning, a headache pressing insistently at the backs of his eyes. He doesn't remember the last time he ate. Palmer's eating. The baby's eating.

That's really all that matters.

The voices that float in nearly make him collapse into the watery trench that is Auden's kitchen and living room so that he could float outside to whoever it is. He's so fucking tired. It's hard to feel anything, even the weight of the baby in his arms.

Louder, louder, and he clutches onto the bannister tighter, listens to the sloshing of someone making their way through the house.

He nearly starts crying even at the sight of Auden's face, Auden who was only supposed to be on a trip to One for three fucking days, the last one he was going to make because of his pregnant fiancee, the encroaching due date...

"Hey," he says stupidly, and then sort of slides down until he's sitting on the stairs, waist submerged in the water. It's colder than he remembers.

He sits that way until Auden grabs him, tugging him up once again. He can't remember the last time he cried, but he wants to now. Auden's always made him feel that way, though, a sense of familial security he never got anywhere else.

Auden's arms close around him, hold him up almost fully out of the water. "Jesus Christ, dude."

"You're telling me," he mutters blearily into his shoulder, shrinking himself down. Auden really ought to hit a mid-life growth spurt and get taller than him again, because he doesn't like it much this way. It was better before.

"We've been trying to get through for five days but it was fucking impassable. Are you okay? Look at me."

He lets himself be manhandled. Auden's hands are positively freezing on either side of his neck, forcing his gaze straight. It's hard to even see, but Auden is terrifying clear.

Right, because he's here now. He can fix this, fix whatever fucking mess they've created.

"Palmer's okay?" Auden asks, and he's nodding before the full magnitude of it even hits him.

Auden has no idea.

"The baby," he says, and all the color drains from Auden's face. It sort of looks like how he feels.

"The baby..."

"She had the baby," he explains. "Like, the night it hit. In the fucking upstairs hallway because the first floor flooded and I didn't know—"

"Hold on," Auden interrupts. "_What_?"

"She had the baby," he repeats. "Your fiancee had your baby. He's really small, but he's alright, I think. They're upstairs."

Auden's hands are shaking against his neck because he hasn't let go, and Aleron isn't sure what's going to happen if he does. Maybe he'll just sit down again. The color is still gone from his face, eyes watering a bit. He can't remember the last time he's seen Auden cry, either. All the way back to Ilona, maybe.

"He?" Auden asks.

"Oh, right. Anticlimactic. Surprise. You have a son. You should go see him."

Auden does let go of him, then, and he expects it but still ends up sitting back down on the stairs without anything else to hold onto, watching Auden disappear up the stairs and down the hall, to all the good left in the world. It's certainly better than the mess that's down here. But everything's fine now, he's convinced. He just spent eight days bunkered down on the second story of a lone house, isolated from the rest of the world, helping bring a child into this world, keeping him alive.

And he's alive. They all are.

He lets his head thud into the wall. His headache is already terrible, anyway. It can't get any worse.

He doesn't care, either.

They're fine now. That's all that matters.

* * *

August 30th, 2219.

The hurricane looks bad on the news and worse in real life.

The hospital is overflowing with people but it doesn't seem to matter when you're victors, as terrible as that makes Carden feel. They already flew him into Four with a group of first responders like he had any right to be there - this just seems like too much. So much for his first time being here.

The room they've crammed Aleron into is small, half-filled with extra equipment. He's not going to complain.

Aleron hasn't moved since he got here, silent and still in the bed, hooked up to the nearing empty IV. Someone will have to come in and change it soon. He'll probably have to go get someone.

Hell, he could do it himself. He knows how to.

He's near asleep himself when Aleron finally twitches, glancing around fitfully with half-lidded eyes before they settle on his face. He tightens his grip on his hand.

"Hey, stupid," he says.

"What," Aleron says flatly. "What?"

"Auden brought you, Palmer, and the baby to the hospital."

"Why am _I _in the hospital?"

"You told Auden you were fine, went down the hall, and blacked out in the bathroom. Palmer said you hadn't had anything to eat or drink in days."

Aleron blinks a few times, getting used to the ceiling. Finally he nudges his fingers through Carden's own. "Oh."

"Yeah, _oh._ That's why I called you stupid, stupid."

"Why are you here?"

He stares at him. "Is that a serious question right now?"

Aleron shakes his head, something dazed still lingering in the back of his eyes. Days of dehydration and malnutrition, caring for a baby that he fucking _delivered _nearly a month and a half early. Carden would expect more than just blacking out in the bathroom after that.

And he did it, somehow. He got all three of them out of it alive when only two were there to start it. Carden can't explain how.

He lifts his hands up and kisses his knuckles. "Go to sleep, stupid."

"Stop calling me stupid."

"I'll stop calling you stupid when you stop acting stupid. I love you, now go to sleep."

Aleron rolls over, into a position that looks unbearably awkward but that he stays resolutely put in. Their hands are still together, which is what he was most concerned about. The IV is still there too, forcing him back into something that looks a bit more like Aleron Grenados and not this dazed, empty shell, clinging to his hand like he's the newborn baby in this hospital, and not Auden and Palmer's son.

"Love you too," Aleron mumbles, and he's out within the minute.

Yeah. He's definitely the baby.

* * *

September 1st, 2219.

Palmer presents him with the baby - again.

He doesn't look any bigger. Slightly more alert, now. Swaddled much better than anything Aleron ever attempted, because Carden never did get around to teaching him that bit of it. It's Palmer that looks better, now. Her face isn't as shadowed anymore, a healthy glow to her cheeks that disappeared in the days they were stuck in that house together.

They're clearing her tomorrow. Her and the baby both.

"We decided on Monroe," Auden tells him. "And we have a question for you."

He looks up, still trying and failing to figure out just how exactly he's supposed to hold something this small without squashing it. Palmer's smiling. Auden looks sort of soft, which is just generally speaking how he looks all the time now.

He taps a gentle finger against little Monroe's lips to check for a sign of air, as if he's not fucking breathing. Force of habit. "What?"

"We want you to be the godfather," Palmer says. "If you'd like that."

He swallows, nearly chokes, and then swallows again. "That wasn't a question."

They both stare at him expectantly. He tries and fails to come up with any sort of halfway decent response and eventually settles on a firm failure. He holds out his arms, thrusting the definitely breathing baby into Auden's waiting hands and then makes a straight line out of the room and into the hall, where Carden had been waiting patiently for once in his never-patient life.

He's crying before he even walks into him, hands over his face. It's like he said - he can't remember the last time he cried.

It feels good, though. Better than he expected.

There are worse things to cry over.

* * *

September 2nd, 2219.

Sherina launches herself into his arms the second he steps foot into the hospital's lobby.

The place is still crawling with people. They had the high ground, here, and it seems like half the District has ended up here looking for shelter and refuge. Palmer and the baby are allowed to stay, but considering he's able-bodied and recovered they not so bluntly told him to get the fuck out so they could use the bed for someone that needed it.

There's nowhere to go. They can't go back to the village; the water's receded, so he's heard, but that doesn't mean it's safe. His parents house might have been spared but you couldn't pay him to go grovelling on their doorstep, Carden or no Carden.

Her feet are still dangling above the floor, so he puts Sherina down. She looks him over, checking for things that she clearly doesn't find.

"You're okay, right?" she asks, concern thick in her tone. "Auden told me you were."

"Fantastic, yeah," he says, tracing Carden through the crowd. He's let them be and has struggled his way to the revolving front doors, trying to take out the ruin that exists far away in the distance. No one's even paying him any mind - either they don't recognize him, or they're not looking long enough to tell.

"He still came?" Sherina asks.

"I think Auden called him. They flew him in. Not that I know where either of us are going tonight, but you know. I'll figure it out."

So much for a first - second, really - glance at Four. This is the first time he's ever actually been here, though, and Aleron was hoping it would be a good one. He was hoping they could start existing in each other's spaces like normal human beings.

"They set camps up in Blueville," Sherina says. "I'd say you could come to my place, but I'm missing half my roof."

It really is a miracle they're all okay.

Sherina is watching him too, frowning. It's made slightly better by the fact that she's still got one arm around her. She's probably thinking the same thing.

"Are we going to stand here forever and watch him or are you going to properly introduce me?" she wonders.

Carden's standing to the side when they get there, face nearly pressed up against the glass like someone made the grave mistake of taking him to that zoo everyone raves about in the Capitol.

Watching the two of them converse and hug is like having an out of body experience. He can't tell if Myca would hate him for this or not, being happy with Carden and her sister like he didn't willingly kill her. They both signed up for it. They both knew. That doesn't change what happened.

He didn't ask for any of this. He didn't think Sherina would stay so close after he got back. He didn't think she would still be here, somehow managing to fill the hole that Myca had left.

And who could have told him that he'd have Carden? Who would he have believed?

He would have liked to, but he wouldn't let himself. Hope was too dangerous.

Except he's got it, now.

* * *

September 4th, 2219.

So they go to Blueville.

It's nice. About as nice as a hurricane-ravaged place can look, but this part of the District escaped the worst of it. The elevation is high, higher than anywhere else, and they've managed to build almost a makeshift little city in the midst of it. There are thousands of people taking refuge here.

Carden wouldn't have the right to mind, but he finds he doesn't anyway. The people here are much too preoccupied with their own lives than his.

Out of some sort of weird victor-like obligation Aleron's been gone half the time anyway, checking on things. Carden splits his time between the hospital and back out here, and Sherina keeps him company when he doesn't have anywhere else to go.

It's a lot of tragedy to witness all at once. The destruction, the people still missing loved ones. There's not much he can do, but he tries.

He spends all day trying, and Aleron spends all day doing God knows what for whoever needs it, but they're always together when night falls. They managed a tent the first night but it's the wide, open skies the second, the grass underneath it.

Like Carden said, he doesn't mind. He can handle this.

When you look up, it's awfully pretty. This place isn't polluted like Eight is, and the sky is completely visible with everything it contains.

He could live here, he thinks. He wants to. With the tragedy you get all the good things.

"What are you thinking about?" Aleron asks, rolling over onto his stomach.

"You, as per usual."

"Oh, _of course_, why did I even bother asking?"

Carden smiles, nudging him in the leg. It's usually true. Aleron drops an arm over him and drags them both closer together - it's not quite cold, but the wind is still coming off strong all the way from the water. Strong enough to feel it. It's not like he's one to protest, anyway. They weren't here two months ago - they weren't anywhere close.

"You really think we could do this, one day?" he asks. "Be here?"

"If you want."

"Is that what you want?"

"Of course," Aleron replies. "As long as you do."

He does. He wants it so bad his chest aches just thinking about it.

"One day," he murmurs. Aleron nods into his shoulder. One day they'll have everything.

For now, he's content with just this.

* * *

January 28th, 2220.

Carden's been to a lot of terribly awkward dinners since his victory, but none quite like this.

He wanted to come, don't get him wrong. He knows Aleron didn't but also that Aleron would do anything if he asked, even if he didn't want to.

So here he is, trying and failing to stare Aleron's parents in the eye because, really, they won't look much at him.

Aleron warned him about this. He just didn't expect it to be this bad.

According to what Aleron's told him, it's a miracle they're even still together, that they could just be doing it for show when the cameras occasionally come to Four to occasionally check up on the victors and their families. There's a reason Aleron left this place for the Academy all those years ago. Sue Carden for asking, though, and almost eagerly coming when they agreed to host him.

It's just one dinner. It shouldn't be this bad.

"This is, uh," he starts, and Aleron side-eyes him so spectacularly he considers crawling under the dining table. "Really good? I have no idea what it is, but—"

"Halibut," his mother answers. Her smile doesn't reach her eyes.

"Oh," he says, very intelligently. "We don't have a lot of fish in Eight."

"So I assumed."

Fuck, what does he do here? Hurry up and finish his meal so that he can sprint out the front door before they serve dessert? Aleron's shoving food in his mouth like he's never seen it in his life - that's probably what he's planning on doing. God, Aleron can't leave him here alone with _his _parents, can he?

He can, and probably will.

"So," his father begins, whilst Carden very slowly realizes he can't remember the man's name for the life of him. "How long have you two been together, exactly?"

This he was kind of expecting.

"Four years, give or take? Three? I guess it's kind of a hard thing to measure," he answers. It looks like a lump of halibut or what-the-fuck-ever gets stuck in his father's throat and refuses to go down.

"That long," he says slowly, turning to Aleron. "And you never considered telling us?"

"Didn't tell anyone until last year to be fair," Aleron says, eyes firmly on his plate, which is where it's been since he's sat down. He's almost done; Carden really needs to speed this process up. He stretches his leg a near-impossible distance to bump their feet together, dropping his ankle over Aleron's own. When he looks up next Aleron's mother is staring at the two of them like they've just announced there's a third person in the relationship as well, which okay, whatever, but when you're dealing with low-lying bigots who use emotional abuse as their weapon of choice he figures the differences don't matter much.

"And are you planning on visiting again soon?" his mother asks, after taking a very long sip of water. "We'd love to have you over again."

File that under _biggest lie someone's ever told him directly to his face, holy shit_. She looks like she'd rather put her fork in her eye and leave it there.

"I'll definitely be back," he announces. His father hums. His mother takes another bite of halibut. Aleron dislodges his ankle and stands up without so much of a word and disappears back through the kitchen. A second later he hears the sliding door open and shut.

The look on his face is sort of heartbreaking, Carden realizes. Like he wanted something and couldn't have it.

Aleron's met his mother, who hugged him the second she met him and made him tea every night and sewed up a hole in his shirt when Colette ripped it.

And this is what he grew up with?

"I'm sorry about my son," his father starts. "He's a bit—"

"A bit what?" he interrupts. "You've hardly spoken to him since he was sixteen."

His mother opens his mouth and then closes it. Carden stands up and pushes the chair in, for good measure, because his own mother would yell at him if he left it askew in the middle of the dining room.

"Thank-you for dinner," he says. "You don't have to invite either of us back."

He nearly considers taking his half-finished plate with him out the back door but leaves it there. One or both of them gape at him as he squeezes out the back door and down the narrow, rocky path towards the beach below, where it appears as if Aleron's viciously digging a hole big enough to fit them both just by kicking the sand around.

It takes the better part of two hours, but he clambers on his back like a limpet and makes Aleron carry him most of the way back to the victor's village, all the way down the coast.

"I'm sorry," he says over his shoulder, just when they start to see the first of the lights.

"You have nothing to be sorry for."

"I know. But I am."

He leans forward to kiss him on the cheek, too, just for good measure.

By the time they hit the front porch he looks incrementally less miserable. Just this side of happy.

At least the walk was a success.

* * *

July 12th, 2220.

There's no relaxing here, not for Carden.

He doesn't think he'll ever be able to sit at a bar again and just not think about anything. He's felt sick since they got here. He hates the bar and he hates the people and he hates the thought of anything happening the most of all.

The bar is conveniently the least swamped. It's still a lose-lose situation.

It wasn't so bad when Aurora was sitting with him, but she's been gone five minutes now. The bartender keeps eyeing him and offering him a drink. You'd think he'd stop after trying half a dozen times.

He's debating the merits of trying to stab the man with a cocktail straw when Hayden sits down next to him. A smidgen of terror that's in him disappears. Aleron got forced to socialize with someone he doesn't want to socialize with, some part of the deal that involves him not getting bought and sold every year, but right now Hayden is just as good.

He never thought he'd say that in his life.

She takes a sip of the drink she receives without hesitating. They sit in silence for two, three, four minutes, and then she slides the nearly full drink over to him, ordering another identical one without pausing.

He stares at it. "You don't have to give me your drink."

"Well, now you know it's fine." She shrugs. "Just drink it, asshole, or I'll have to, and drunk me won't be able to watch you very well."

"You don't have to watch me, either."

"Yeah, we do."

We, not I. He knows what this is - it's a rotating schedule of who's going to sit with his very pathetic little self while both Aleron and Aurora are occupied for the time being. She won't be here all night, and Ariadne will come sit with him after that, or Lissy. Someone will.

"Do you hate anything the way I hate this?" he asks quietly.

"The dark."

"Why?"

"Did you _watch _my Games?_"_

_"Watch _is a bold word," he says, and she snorts. Hers were played in almost complete darkness, save for the few things around the arena that glowed. It never got light. Only the Careers and their night vision goggles could see anything for more than a few seconds. He remembers the greenish glow of the screen, a permanent fixture for all of the viewers so that they could see.

She had killed one of her allies in the worst of the darkness. She hadn't known it was him when she swung the axe.

"It's not as bad as it used to be," she continues. "But it's not fun, either."

He has enough trouble sleeping, sometimes. He can't imagine being scared of the thing that surrounded it the entire time.

"Does it help, having someone?" she asks.

He nods. "Have you given up?"

"It's not about giving up. If it was just the fact that she didn't like me it would sting, but she doesn't like _anyone_. I can't change that about her. I wouldn't want to."

Somewhere, Ariadne is out there, mingling or not. Probably not. He can't imagine how badly that hurts. Hayden still loves her, he thinks, but in a way that most people love each other based on the default.

"Besides," she says. "I was talking to someone, you know. Before I was forced to come to this shit-hole, anyway."

"Is she nice?"

"No, she's the most terrible person on the planet. Shut up, Carden."

"Just wondering. Your love life is weird."

"And yours isn't. Right."

"I'm just saying. And I'm not the one who wrote poetry about my _massive crush _on Ari."

"You know," she says, twirling her drink around. "I'd smash this over your head, but I don't want Aleron to hurt me."

He smiles. She takes her glass and bumps it into his, nearly knocking it over. He catches it in the nick of time, and finally allows himself to take the smallest of sips. It doesn't taste anything like he expected - sweeter, for one, and not quite like off-brand burner fuel.

"Thanks," he says finally. She nods, downing the rest of her drink, and orders another one.

Ariadne will be coming to relieve her sooner rather than later.

* * *

January 9th, 2221.

Not that he's surprised or anything, but Monroe actually likes Aleron.

Alright, color him very surprised.

The kid's been an angel ever since he came into this world, and he'd have every right not to be. He had to deal with Aleron's bullshit for days on end trapped in a hurricane-ravaged house, for one. Aleron has no benchmarks for how kids are supposed to behave, but he thinks Monroe cries an abnormally small amount. He smiles a lot. He runs to the door whenever someone comes to see him. He waited until Aleron was around to talk his first few, horribly wobbly steps across the living room, almost the day of his first birthday.

Okay, that's not how it went, but that's how he's _saying _it went.

The thing is, he has no idea how to operate around any kid like this. He's got teenagers down, but this is uncharted territory. He spent years when he was younger pleading for a sibling, but the lack of one was better, it turns out, for both him _and _the non-existent soul that would've been born into their family as a result.

Every time he gets even a bit bigger Aleron has to re-learn how to hold him. He has hands that automatically reach down or forward to block him from running into something. He nearly has a panic attack the first time Auden and Palmer leave him alone for a night with the kid.

But he learns. He learns, and Monroe rewards him with the most sickly sweet smiles and the tightest hugs and sometimes, when he's in the right mood, he lets Aleron hold him and falls asleep right on top of him.

The kid doesn't know it, but he changes so much for Aleron mentally that he can't quite remember how he was before.

It's a good thing, too. It takes almost a year for Aleron to realize that, but Carden's had a picture of the two of them in his room since Monroe was two months old, one that Palmer snuck him through Aleron's bag when he came to visit.

Aleron doesn't know that, but some things are for the best.

This one's no exception.

* * *

June 30th, 2221.

Lissy's the only one sitting downstairs in the lounge.

She was drinking a lot, three days ago. Talking about Jules even more-so. That didn't happen very often, not unless Cashmere brought him up, and she rarely did.

To hear about Jules was like hearing about a memory that was almost forgotten. It was worse than that for Aleron because he hadn't known him, and people talking always sounded beyond the realm of sad. This many people wouldn't talk about him this way when he was dead and gone; that was all Jules.

Aleron wishes he had known him.

She had said a lot of things three days ago. There had been a whole group of them, but only after they had all left had she started with Jules. She was thirteen when she met him, fifteen when she lost him, the elder brother she had never had. That hadn't stopped someone from killing him. It hadn't stopped the case from going cold years later.

Not for Lissy, though. She had said things. She had said _lots _of things.

And now Rylan was dead.

He perches on the edge of her armchair, raising a brow. "They released the autopsy report an hour ago."

Lissy hums. "Did they?"

"How sure were you?"

She fiddles with her shirt sleeve, and in the half a second it slips down her wrist he sees bruises down her forearm, stark against her veins.

She pulls it back up. "Ninety-nine percent. What did it say?"

Aleron holds the words close for a moment, long enough for her to tilt her head back against the chair and look up at him. A small, slow smile spreads across her face. There's a scar at the corner of her mouth that they would have gotten rid of after the Games, so he doesn't know where she got it from. He's certainly not about to ask.

"Natural causes," he says finally. Lissy looks to the ceiling, but the smile hasn't left her face.

He gets why Carden thinks she's terrifying. Because she is.

"Interesting," Lissy settles on. She struggles to rid her face of the smile but finally succeeds, leaving an odd, crooked quirk to both corners that doesn't quite disappear.

Interesting, indeed.

* * *

November 28th, 2221.

Auden and Palmer have another baby.

When he tries to refuse the whole godparent deal all over again Palmer threatens to call Carden.

He accepts it, not at all begrudgingly, though he tries to act that way.

No one is fooled in the slightest.

* * *

April 18th, 2222.

"Alright, so here's how this is going to go," Arryl says from the doorway. "If we really are moving as soon as Colette is through the reaping, then it's on one condition."

Carden's gotten used to this - it's far from the first condition Arryl's given him, but it looks be the most important. His brother always has a very serious, halfway sour look on his face, but he looks downright laser-focused now, so Carden sits up.

"What?"

"Everett comes with us."

He swallows, a lump rapidly forming in his throat. "That's not how it works. The President said—"

"I know what the fucking President said. Immediate family only. Do you think a sister-in-law counts?"

It takes Carden admittedly longer than he'd have liked it to. The most infuriating thing about Arryl, or perhaps one of the best things, is how composed he is. Carden didn't see him cry over their dad until four days after it happened, when he found him sobbing in the bathroom at four in the morning and found out he'd been doing it every night since.

"You... did you propose to her?" he asks.

"Not yet. I want to, though. I don't want to lose her, Carden."

He knows those words too well. Those words have a corner of his heart that they call home, and now his brother is saying them too. He remembers meeting Everett for the first time, years ago now. Not once had she ever faltered in the face of all of _this _\- she had embraced it like few people ever could. They had found each other because they could handle anything and still come back together afterward.

"I know it's not right to ask this, it's your money," Arryl continues. "But I sorta need a ring for that, and—"

"And nothing," he interrupts, launching himself to his feet. "Let's fucking go then, if you want to get a ring."

"Are you serious?"

"Of course I'm serious!"

"What, no lecture first? No _you're jumping into this too fast, Arryl _or _you're only twenty-two, Arryl, are you sure you want to do this now? _None of that? _You're _not even engaged for crying out-loud."

He grabs Arryl by the shoulders and gives him a sharp shake. "I said let's go. We're taking her with us."

Arryl's smile could literally light up the fucking room, and he changes his mind.

That's the best thing about him.

* * *

July 31st, 2222.

It's his first night in the house.

It's not like Carden hasn't slept here a hundred times over, but it's different now that it's _his _house too. He's under one roof with Aleron for good.

He rolls over to look at him; they've barely been in here two minutes, so there's no way he's asleep. Carden hasn't even settled yet.

"I really want to marry you one day," he says.

"Sounds good," Aleron agrees without blinking, without moving, without leaving a single second in-between their words for either of them to breathe otherwise.

Carden falls asleep easier than he has in years.

* * *

December 5th, 2222.

He gets a thorough beating four times in the six months after he moves to Four, and nearly dies on the fifth.

Carden has no idea that's happening at all until he wakes up in the hospital.

Not being able to move is still the oddest sensation. He had the vaguest memory of it from the Games, from clinging to life to outlast Glisten and the hole he had left in her chest. It had only taken a few minutes, but it had felt like hours, days, years. Like it was way too long to be survivable.

Nothing hurts this time, but he's hooked up to two different machines. His right arm is in a cast up to his elbow. It feels like someone's weighed his left leg down with a bundle of rocks. He can tell his face is sore but can't actually _feel _it, and it's nothing short of disorienting. He stares at the needle sticking out of his forearm and follows it all the way up to the IV bag dangling at his bedside and finds Aleron staring back at him.

He blinks a few times. Aleron doesn't move. If Carden hadn't already spent so many years previous convincing himself that Aleron was real he'd think he was looking at a statue right now.

Carden tries, but he can't settle on anything that makes sense, in Aleron's eyes. It looks like a lot of things - like he's about to punch the wall, or maybe Carden, or start crying hysterically, or scream at the top of his lungs.

He's hoping it's none of those.

"Do you remember what happened?" Aleron asks quietly. Carden rolls his head back into the pillow to peer at the ceiling. Does he? He was going to the Academy to get something Aleron left in one of the back offices, but he never got there. Why didn't he get there?

"Did I get attacked?" he questions. Aleron already looked tense before, but Carden sees his jaw clench, sees his lips go white.

"That's what I'm asking you."

Everything is genuinely, worryingly fuzzy. He had cut through the entire section of houses and the field to come around the back of the Academy, but he hadn't even seen the door. Something had hit him - _someone _had, with something, and it had been enough to knock him to the ground. There had been pain when he tried to catch himself, and he had enough time to roll over to see it.

"Carden," Aleron says.

He had seen it. He had seen exactly who it was, and then he had seen the sole of a boot before it connected with his face. After that, only blood. But he had felt it still, the pain, as it landed again and again. At his stomach and his side. His leg. His leg had hurt so bad he knew even if he got away he wasn't getting very far.

"Carden," Aleron repeats. He swallows deeply. "Was it someone from before?"

"Does it matter if it was?"

"Of course it fucking matters!" he snaps. The volume of Aleron's voice actually startles him. "What are you not fucking understanding right now? You've been laughing since _August _every time one of these kids has come after you, telling me it's fine, not letting me fucking do anything about it, and now someone, one of them, kicks the shit out of you in an alley and leaves you there to die."

"Are you sure that's not an over-dramatization?"

"No," Aleron says. "No, it's fucking _not. _You have more broken bones than I've ever had in my entire life - your leg, your wrist, five of your ribs. Two kids left the Academy past closing and you're lucky they did, because if they hadn't found you I don't think anyone would have until morning. And I've had every fucking doctor for the past _two days _telling me they don't know if you would have made it that long."

Two days. He couldn't even be reliable enough to tell someone the exact date. Aleron looks like he's going to explode, and he's still standing a few feet away for that exact reason.

They had left him, though. They could have killed him outright, but they didn't.

Did they really try, then, or were they just hoping he'd die overnight, long after they were gone?

"Tell me who it was," Aleron says.

"I don't know his name."

"So it was someone from before, then."

"Yeah," he says quietly. "It... it was."

He was laughing before because it was a bit of roughing up, because these Academy kids had a new target and they knew he couldn't beat them. This was past that. This one most likely wanted him dead.

Aleron closes his eyes, taking a few deep breaths. Carden watches him stride to the door without breaking pace.

"Where are you—"

"I'm going to get your mom," he says. "And then I'm going to the Academy to print off every file I have in there so you can tell me who it was."

Well, that'll do it. The kid definitely has that bloodthirsty Academy edge to him, judging by what he's done. Carden doesn't spend enough time there to recognize him on sight, but you tend to remember people who have knocked you around once or five times.

His heart-rate has picked up, subconsciously, and the monitor is adjusting to match its pace, beeping erratically. It was so quiet and even before.

Aleron has one white-knuckled grip on the door, staring at him. Carden reaches out a hand of his own, stretching it as far as the drip will allow him to go.

"Please," he murmurs. Aleron crosses the room in three huge steps and ignores his hand entirely, reaching down to cup his face with both hands and kiss him. The sheer flood of relief he had been waiting for since he woke up unable to move finally hits him. Whatever drugs they're pumping into him are stopping him from feeling much else.

Aleron's not fortunate enough to have that. His hands are shaking, a fearful tremor.

It's difficult, but he cares little. He wraps his properly working, if not slightly hindered, working hand around the back of Aleron's neck to wedge them apart a few inches.

"You can breathe now," he tells him softly. Aleron nods, looking unconvinced despite it, but some of the tension and fear bleeds away from his face.

He traces a finger down the side of Carden's face, and there's no odd pull or press from the soreness. That must be one of the only places on him that's intact. "I'll come right back," he promises. Carden has little choice in accepting that - he's immobile, for the time being, but he trusts that Aleron will. He always does, one way or another. They keep coming back.

It doesn't feel like Carden himself will, not now, but the truth is ugly and fickle at best.

He will, one way or another.

He's good at it.

* * *

December 7th, 2222.

Creel doesn't look him in the eye when he walks into the office.

Aleron's known this kid for seven years, give or take. He joined the Academy the year he won. If all of this hadn't gone down the way he had, there's a strong chance Creel would have been the chosen volunteer.

He'll be getting up on that stage over Aleron's cold, dead body.

He thinks, if he had to take a bet, that Creel wouldn't win anyway. He's too impulsive. Avisa is almost a guarantee to go in, and she's not level-headed enough to balance him out. They'd have to find him a partner that could, and none of them are good enough.

Someone would get sick of him before long.

"What's up?" Creel asks, like both Aleron and Auden couldn't put him six feet under without anyone noticing. It's late enough that they could dig a hole in the back field with no witnesses.

And even if someone did, no one would say anything.

It's that mentality that they all spend so many years harboring and so many years trying to get rid of if they're lucky enough to come back.

Creel has his gaze firmly fixated on Auden because he knows what's going to happen. He's trying to delay the inevitable.

"So do we get a reasoning, or are we kicking you out without one?" Auden asks. Something like fear leaks into Creel's eyes - apparently he wasn't expecting that, exactly.

"You can't—"

"Can't what? Kick you out? Kicking you out would be the preferable option if you knew what the other was."

This office has always been way too small, but with the three of them in here there's nowhere to go. Creel's foot inches backwards, and then stops. Aleron's between him and the door, and it's not like one of them wouldn't catch him. He wouldn't even get outside.

Auden wouldn't hurt the kid. Auden hasn't hurt a single person in his life except the four who got in his way.

"You wouldn't let him," Creel says quietly.

"It's not if I would let him or not - it's if I would be able to stop him. And he's stronger than me, so I'm guessing not."

Here's Creel Dalgaard, realizing he's stuck in-between Auden, who cares maybe a little less than he anticipated, and Aleron, who's growing more inclined to kill him by the second. With every passing second the realization is sinking deeper, and sooner or later he'll realized he's utterly fucked.

Sooner, really.

"So, about that reasoning," Auden says.

"You know as well as I do that he shouldn't be here," Creel says, nearly tripping over his words. "He _shouldn't_. You let in one and then the place is fucking overrun with Eight's. What then? In a few years this place will fall apart, and you won't get anything after that. You'll stop getting money from the Capitol, and you'll stop getting victors. Do you really want that?"

"Did you think beating the shit out of him was going to make him go home, then? Or were you hoping he died?"

"I wasn't the only one who went after him," Creel so helpfully reminds them. "Lila fucking punched him two months ago, and I don't see you doing anything to her."

"Did Lila put him in the hospital?"

"I—"

"Did she, or not? Because we talked to Lila, and _everyone_, two months ago. And you're still the only one who nearly killed him."

"You could do what I did to him to every single trainee in this building and not one of them would bat an eye," Creel says. When he whirls on Aleron he's actually managed to raise some convincing anger. "If you don't want to keep finding him _half-dead _then you should teach him to defend himself. It's not like he put up much of a fight."

Creel looks angry, sure, but he watches that anger bleed into fear, and he watches it from his position directly in front of the kid when he slams him into the wall. Creel is by no means a small kid, but his struggling is just shy of futile.

"Listen to me," Aleron says, fastening a hand around his shirt to hold him there.

"There's something fucking wrong with you," Creel manages. "No one kills seven people like you did."

"Do you wanna find out what is is, then? Or should we both just shut up so I can make it eight?"

And _there _it goes, the complete and utter transformation into sheer terror. Creel didn't think either of them were serious until right now. He goes white in the face. It would be far too easy to strangle the life out of him.

"Listen to me," he repeats, quieter. "If I see you within a hundred feet of the Academy's front doors after this you will never live to do it again. If you ever try to step foot in here I will take a piece of you off. And if you ever so much as put a hand on him again I will cut you into so many pieces that no one will have a hope in hell of putting you back together."

Creel swallows, sending one last, stupid glance at Auden as if that's going to change anything.

Auden shrugs. "Like I said, I'm not stopping him. Are we good?"

"Perfect."

Aleron lets go of him. As soon as he's free Creel ducks under his arm and scrambles for the door. The noise of his footsteps sprinting down the hall is obvious and even slightly gratifying.

Auden hums. "That went well."

* * *

December 13th, 2222.

Carden is out cold on the couch when Aleron gets home.

It's made slightly better by the fact that he's half asleep on Arryl, who probably wasn't too pleased about that at all. Arryl's asleep though too, tipped over onto the armrest and un-bothered in sleep, and Everett is curled up in the armchair in front of the fireplace, the only one of the bunch who actually looks semi-comfortable.

He curls a hand around Carden's shoulder. "Get off your brother."

Carden mumbles something. "Why?"

"Because you can't sleep like that. You'll hurt yourself worse."

"I already hurt," Carden points out, but he sits up, hugging his arm to his chest. Judging by the time he was supposed to have taken his meds an hour ago, and his slurred words are confirming that. He's more likely higher than a kite than in any sort of real pain.

He wakes up both Arryl and Everett and sends them to the guest bedroom. There's no point in making them head home this late. Carden is staring at nothing when he returns, but blinks a few times when his view is suddenly blocked.

"You ready to go to sleep for real?"

Carden nods, stretching an arm out in what could only be described as a spectacular effort, for his crutch. It's no less than fifteen feet across the room. Aleron reaches down and scoops him off the couch instead.

"Oh, okay," Carden says. He tries to grab at Aleron's shoulder, frowning. "My fingers don't even work. This sucks."

"Your fingers work just fine. It's your wrist."

"They don't work," he repeats, sadder, insistent.

"The other underlying reason to that could be that you're high as hell."

"Am I?"

"Think so."

"Awesome," Carden decides with a mumble, closing his eyes. He leans further into Aleron's chest, giving up his quest to hold onto anything.

He's asleep before he even gets him to bed.

* * *

March 3rd, 2223.

It's too long before anyone is inclined to let him leave the house alone.

Carden's not all the way mad considering his leg is _still _casted, but he can put enough weight on it. Now that his wrist is back to one hundred percent he can actually properly use the crutches the hospital gave him and not be at risk of falling over every other minute or so.

Creel's gone from the Academy, so he doesn't feel too nauseous shuffling his invalid self down all the halls looking for either of them. There's a lot of people, more than normal. When the weather's bad the halls start teeming with gaggles of teenagers and kids who look too young to be left to their own devices. Most of them don't look at him. _Most of them _are too scared to.

He finds Nava first, hauling herself out of the lap pool. She stands tall, strong - she _looks _like a Career and she doesn't move a muscle, because she knows Carden's coming for her, and making him struggle any further across the damp floor will only end badly for one of them.

"I'd wave, but I need my hands," he informs her.

"Is it safe for you to be in here?"

"Probably not. If I fall in, please don't let me drown."

She wouldn't; he doesn't have to tell her that. Some of his memory has trickled back, the brief stints of consciousness he had in-between blackouts in the alley. She had been there, and she had made someone get him help. It's faint, but he remembers her telling him he was going to be okay.

She looks older than sixteen.

"First off, you know, thanks," he says. "Second of all, you're gonna have to let me explain before you get all up in arms, or anything."

She nods, agreeable. He pulls the envelope from his back pocket. "Auden told me about you, and your family. Hurley's too. You're both only here because you need the stipend for what's left of your families. What's in here should be enough to cover both of you for at least ten years. That's about the maximum they would let me hand over to two sixteen year olds, but there will be more after that if you still need it."

He waits until she takes the envelope from him to crack open the seal. She doesn't pull either of the cheques all the way out, but she glances over the both of them.

"That's a lot of money," she says finally.

"I know. You both saved my life, arguably."

"So you want to save ours?"

"I want you to stay here, if that's what you want."

She nods, lips pursed. She closes the envelope, but not before she pulls one the cheques back out. When she folds it back into his hand he can't help but notice that it's the one with her name on it.

"I'll give this to Hurley," she says. "But you can keep mine."

"Why?"

"If Auden told you anything about me, anything _important_, then you know I need to do something. What I wanted my whole life isn't going to work, so I'm doing this instead. And if I volunteer next year and die then my brother will have enough money to get by. But I don't think I'm going to."

"You know that much bravado can be dangerous, right?"

"Says you," she says with a laugh. "I have to do something, you know? I want to volunteer, and I want to win. I want to help people after this."

He's never gotten the mentality of some of these people here, and he likely never will, but that he understands. Nava looks so sure of herself in a way most sixteen year olds shouldn't be. In a few weeks she'll be seventeen, and then next year they'll let her volunteer.

"If you don't come back, I'll make sure your brother's okay."

She fiddles with the envelope, staring down at the creases she's creating in the corners. She looks up at him, and he expects some level of uncertainty, but finds none.

"Thanks," she says. "I gotta go, so... don't fall in, okay?"

"No promises."

She smiles before she turns to go, watching him amble a few paces away from the pool until she's satisfied that he's a safe enough distance away before she exits out the opposite door. They may have lost a trainee in Hurley with this money, but they'll always have her. Nothing Carden could possibly do will change that. He recognizes a firmly made decision when he sees it.

She's going in next year.

There's nothing he can do about that.

* * *

June 2nd, 2223.

Being back in Eight is odd.

Carden's been gone almost a year. Coming back is like finding that sweater you thought you had lost in the very back of your closet, your favorite one, only to discover that it wasn't as great as you remembered.

Eight was home, always would be, but there was something wrong with it now. It wasn't good enough.

It was good to be back with Aurora, though. She had met him at the train station and hugged him something fierce, inspecting him over for any new signs of injury like he had gotten the leg cast off and beaten himself up with it all over again. He still limps a bit sometimes when he's laid still for too long, but he doesn't tell her that. What Aurora doesn't know won't hurt her too bad.

Her house, at least, is the same as always. He gave up his as part of the deal, but she has one of the guest bedrooms made up for him and Izani's already finished cooking dinner by the time the two of them get back. Kyrin comes tromping downstairs to give him a massive hug, something newly strong in him now that he's vaguely the size and age of a teenager. It's weird, and he doesn't like it.

The other one though has no inclination towards him whatsoever. Aurora and Izani only adopted him seven months ago, and they've already filed paperwork to change his last name at his own request, but Aravis shows no interest in him whatsoever. He stares a lot and doesn't do much else. Aurora said he's a quiet one, but he's not sure that's it.

They're left alone soon enough after dinner, him and Aurora. Izani's always been the kind of person to give them space when they need it, and Kyrin retires to bed soon after. He's two days out from his first reaping, but doesn't seem scared at all.

The living room is silent save for Aravis creeping in to join the two of them, and he curls up silently in the armchair and looks directly at Carden.

"Why does everyone here call you a traitor?" he asks. Aurora shoots him a look. That's the first entire sentence Aravis has said to him since they've got here.

"He's not, sweetheart."

"But that's what everyone says."

"Because I left," he answers. "You know I live in Four with my family now."

"I know. Is that why?"

"People think lots of things," Aurora cuts in. "Not all of them necessarily true. That doesn't mean they're not allowed to think those things."

"They're not wrong, though," he insists.

"Don't tell me that when you've spent years listening to Hayden talk about Roan," Aurora says. "You know things aren't black and white like that."

"I'd hate him too, if I was her," he says. "I moved across the country and I'm still coming back to Eight every year because I _want _to, not out of any obligation. They'd have no issue making you mentor alone every year until you got someone else. He let Keva mentor alone for fifteen years when she didn't have to, and it was Hayden that had to deal with the fallout of that the second she got out herself."

"Roan's a good person. Better than most."

"I mean, I wouldn't know. I've met him _once _and it was on my victory tour."

Even the thought of leaving Aurora alone to mentor every year makes him sick, and even if they get someone else out, she'll have to stick around. She won't let the newbie go alone. She never would. There's a thing called multitasking here, and Roan could easily do it. He's got enough appointed officials in Seven to leave for a few weeks a year in the summer before he goes back to his mayoral duties.

He chances a glance at Aravis, who's eyes are very wide but still undeniably curious.

"I don't expect you to come back every year," Aurora says quietly. "You've got a new home now. I want you to stay there."

"I'll be here until we get someone else," he repeats aloud. "And after that we can rotate every year with them until we get another. I don't care."

He cares. Everyone here cares in some respect, or else they wouldn't be having this conversation. If Aurora had it her way they'd never see each other again, because she's here and she wants him in Four, where he belongs now. He's not sure if they'd let him go to the Capitol with Aleron and Auden - he's not a Four, despite what his papers say. He certainly couldn't mentor one. He wants to be like Ari, who's already gotten someone out and who probably won't have to mentor in a few years unless she really wants to. He wants to be like Luster, who's been claiming for months now that she's got two volunteers better than any they've had in the past ten years.

He can't be any of them.

"I don't think you're a traitor," Aravis offers out of nowhere. "You seem pretty cool."

That's a hell of a compliment coming from the kid who has hardly interacted with him, but it means something. It means a lot. Aurora reaches over to squeeze his arm, and some of the tension dissolves from the room.

Before he leaves too Aravis gives Carden a departing hug as well, despite how nervous it may be, and he feels at least one of them is better for it.

That's what he's hoping, anyway.

* * *

June 28th, 2224.

It takes six days.

Six agonizing, brutally long days. Aleron sends Nava in and expects nothing more than what's happened every year since he won.

And then, something miraculous happens.

She wins.

* * *

May 1st, 2225.

"What are you doing?" Faelin asks.

Aleron pauses, both hands stuck wholly inside the bedside table drawer as if he was just caught with his hands in the cookie jar. He hadn't even heard the front door open, and by the sounds of it someone's downstairs, too.

"Is he here?"

"No. It's Colette."

Well, Colette _does _have a strong penchant to go rummaging around in their fridge, so that's fine. Faelin's staring at him with a hand on each hip, though, something slightly accusatory in the turn of her mouth.

"Why does he never wear this?" he asks, waving the ring back at him.

"Because it doesn't fit him. Dad's hands were bigger."

Right. That makes sense. Carden put that thing in the drawer they day he moved in and hardly ever takes it out. Whenever he does he only stares at it for a few moments before putting it back. He knew that it belonged to his father but not if it meant anything special. He wanted to ask why he never wore it, but didn't have the guts.

"Are you doing what I think you're doing?" she asks.

"What do you think I'm doing?"

"Nothing," she quips. "I would get a size down, if I were you. But you're totally not doing anything."

"Definitely not," he mutters. If he ever gets something accomplished in his life without at least one member of this family finding out beforehand, it'd be a miracle. He puts the ring back and closes the drawer. Carden doesn't go snooping, not like Aleron is right now, so it should be safe.

Should be.

"Don't tell him," he says, breezing past her out the door. "If he gets back before I do, make up an excuse for me."

"Like what?"

"Anything that doesn't involve the word _ring_."

"What about the word proposal?"

Colette hears that one - she's at the bottom of the steps as if she was about to come up after them, one of his blueberry yogurts in her hands. The spoon falls out of her mouth.

"What?" she asks wildly.

"You heard nothing," he says, scooping up the spoon. He deposits it back in the yogurt cup, tired of waiting for her unmoving hand.

He's got better things to do.

* * *

May 4th, 2225.

Carden hasn't had any trouble with his leg in a long while, which is a good thing, because he finds the damn thing hidden in the closet within three days.

In his panic, he drops the little velvet box, and it pops open. It goes bouncing under the bed, and then the ring rolls after it. He doesn't get a good look at either in his haste to crawl after them.

And that's how Aleron finds him - half under the bed, reaching for both the ring and the box with frantic, outstretched arms.

When he pops back up, box in one hand and ring in the other, Aleron doesn't even look surprised.

* * *

May 5th, 2225.

Aleron is awoken by Carden shuffling about, restless as always.

He thinks that something's happened, first. Carden grabs his wrist and then his fingers, and he feels something encircle one of them. His suspicion is wrong - Carden lays back down and turns to face him.

He opens his eyes. The sun hasn't even fully risen yet, and Carden is staring at him.

He lifts his arm above his head, blinking until the sleep has cleared from his vision. There's a ring on his finger, the same knotted silver band that he had pulled out of the drawer five days ago, the one that's too big for Carden to wear, the one that belonged to the father Aleron never got to meet.

"That's yours," he says, staring at it. It's perfectly snug around his finger.

"No," Carden murmurs. "It's yours."

"Are you sure?"

Carden nods without hesitating before he closes his eyes once again, burrowing into Aleron's shoulder. He allows his hand to fall, and when he rests it over his stomach he can feel the metal band pressing into his skin, still cool to the touch.

Somehow it fits better than anything else ever has.

* * *

September 1st, 2225.

"Have you guys talked about having kids?" Sherina asks.

He swallows. "Yeah."

"And is the jury still out?"

The jury's not out. In fact, the jury has taken up residence inside his house and is banging on every single door the longer he goes about putting this off.

Aleron was the one who started talking about kids, because they're watching Marcella for the afternoon, and now he's mad he did. He can't go about avoiding it. It's been the goddamn elephant in the room forever now. There's something wrong with him for trying this, for wanting it at all. And Colette outright fucking _offered_, too. He's still here thinking this could work instead.

"He always did, I think," he answers. "I didn't know if I did for a long time."

"But you do now?"

He nods, and Sherina's smile is so resounding that it makes very single negative thought he had about this fly out the window. Even if something goes wrong here that's not the end of it. Their future is still somewhere out there.

She leans her head on his shoulder. "That's good. That's really good. They'll be an absolute menace, but good."

"Well, Carden said he doesn't care if it's related to him, so hopefully if we take his genes out of the equation it won't be."

Sherina laughs, digging her fingers into his ribs for a few seconds to make him squirm. "Have you thought about it?" she questions. "Or talked about how you're going to do it? Or is that too soon?"

It's past too soon. He wants this - they both do. It's not as if they're running out of time, or anything. They've got more of that than they really need these days. It just feels like a good time for it now, like something he wants in his life. The thought has always terrified him until now - it's not like he grew up with the healthiest examples of parenting.

He likes to think that he can do it. That _they _can do it.

He shifts, uneasily. Her smile is gone, and that feeling is back. No matter how much he stares down the back porch into the garden the feeling only intensifies.

"What's up?" she asks. It's obvious that something's wrong. He's been stewing in his own silence for too long.

"We were going to ask you," he forces out. He's not sure between the two of them who goes more stiff. Sherina lifts her head off his shoulder, eyes wide, and her jaw is working away like she's trying to come up with something to say, but nothing is presenting itself.

"I have no fucking right to ask anything of you," he continues. "Especially not _that_. And I don't want you to think you have to say yes, because there's no obligation, and we'll figure something else out—"

"Are you serious?" she asks quietly. "Like actually?"

"I've been working up the nerve to say that for weeks."

She puts a hand over her mouth, muffling breathless laughter. "You're serious."

"Yeah," he says weakly. If he had the option to get up and run away from her he just might. "If it's a no, it's a no. I don't care. I still love you, you know that."

She interrupts his next thought to throw her arms around him, and her sudden weight nearly knocks him off the side-steps and into the grass. He catches them both with one hand, listening to her continued laughter into the front of his shoulder. He doesn't know what to make of that. It doesn't sound like a bad thing but he has difficulty telling some days. With Sherina he's always too scared to guess, less something go wrong. He won't be the cause of that after all he's done to her life.

"So when are we doing this?"

"What?" he asks. "You can't just _decide _like that, you—"

"I can decide however I want!" she insists. "As long as I get to be Auntie Sherina. And please don't cry. I can tell you're making that awful I'm-about-to-cry face and that's the worse face you make."

"It is not."

"It _is. _Can I go tell Carden?"

She sounds positively gleeful, like nothing better has ever happened to her than this moment. He nods, still trapped in the tight tangle of her arms. Carden didn't even know he was coming out here to talk with her about this. Aleron didn't even know that himself.

She squeezes him one last time. "Myca would be proud of us, hey?"

Without waiting for a response she's back up the stairs and into the house, shouting for Carden's whereabouts. She knows what would have happened if she stayed; the tears would have come sooner rather than later, and his eyes are already swimming with them.

He'd like to think that. He wants to.

If that's the case, his kids will have someone just as good looking out for them.

* * *

October 21st, 2225.

"So, it worked."

His mother smiles, so bright that it hurts his eyes. She rounds the island.

"That's great, baby," she says, kissing the top of his head. Aleron's busying himself with taking the slowest, most methodical sips of his water that Carden's ever seen in his life.

It's the only way he's going to get out of making Carden say it alone.

"Did they give you a date? How is she feeling?"

"Early July, they said. Sherina's good. She's been feeling a little sick, she said, but nothing too bad. All things considered it went really well."

"I still gave you a grand-kid first, mom," Arryl says from the dining table. He's pushed all the chairs away from the table's edge because Marcella is crawling around down there. She keeps making her way to the island to steal some of Carden's food, sitting at the bottom of his stool until he hands something down to her.

"I know, sweetheart. But now I'll have another!"

"Two more, actually," he says casually. You could hear a pin drop. Arryl blinks a few times into his bowl of pasta and then looks up at him. His mother's eyes widen to the size of the bowl itself.

Aleron smiles around the rim of his glass. Carden's never hated him more.

* * *

July 6th, 2226.

Aleron has finally resorted to the primal, cliche urge to just get some fucking air.

It's been a long forty-eight hours. Every single one has passed like it's a year's length instead. Every waking minute since Sherina roused them both in the dead of night and said that _something _was happening, and then seven hours later...

They were here. That was all he could have hoped for.

He hadn't held either of them until after the twenty-four mark, and when one of them had finally been put in his arms he had searched deep for all of his feeble, sleep-deprived strength and stayed standing when all he wanted to do was sink to the floor and cry. All that matters is that they _would _be okay, not the initial distress they were in. They were both small, too, just shy of five pounds. Smaller than they should have been, and hooked up to too many things now to fix it.

They were alive, and their heartbeats were strong, and so he leaves Carden sitting with them in intensive care and makes the first bench he finds outside his home.

He gets ten minutes of peace before someone finds him.

His mother walked with an imposing pace, each foot hitting the ground as if she planned on squashing someone beneath it. Carden's mother was the exact opposite, but she was hard to miss regardless. She radiated some of that comfort that Aleron had never had.

It's an eerie, terrible reminder that neither of his parents are here, and he wouldn't want them to be.

"I'm sorry," he says, when she sits down beside him.

"For what?"

He doesn't have an answer. She slides over - their legs aren't quite touching but she wraps an arm around his shoulder and squeezes. "There's nothing to be sorry for."

"We couldn't have done anything."

"You're right. None of you could have changed the outcome. She made it longer than most women do carrying twins."

"Why are they so small, then?"

"They'll never be able to nail that down. Some babies just are. Carden was small. Colette too. They'll grow up just fine. I've been around enough babies to know that."

This woman sitting beside him is small too, practically waifish. She looks healthy now, glowing with added happiness, and Aleron doesn't like imagining her how Carden described her _before. _Too thin for her own good after going to bed one too many nights without dinner, waking up and feeding her kids breakfast instead of filling her own empty stomach. Letting the work take over until she was black and blue under the eyes. Loving everyone around her unconditionally anyway.

His parents never hurt him, but they never loved him either.

"They're going to be wonderful," she continues. "And so are you. They get to grow up in such an incredible life - a life that most people don't get. And everyone is going to love them and protect them and keep them safe. You may have difficulty getting them away from me once they're out of intensive care but that's the perils of having a grandparent so close by."

She's the only grandparent they're going to have. He nods, and she squeezes him again, although this time it feels more like a hug that he readily accepts with open arms.

He's gotten used to her hugs.

One day his kids will, too.

* * *

July 7th, 2226.

Carden feels like he _lives _in intensive care.

They don't let him sleep in here, which is borderline offensive, but they can't make him leave the hospital altogether, so he doesn't. None of them do.

They finally start letting people in. His mother, first, who picks both of them up with the gentlest hands and coos at them like they aren't the thousandth and thousandth and one babies she's seen in her entire life. All of his siblings, who do much of the same. They've spent too much time doing it not to. Palmer comes with the kids, too, and sends photos to Auden all the way in the Capitol. He holds onto Monroe while he perches on top of a chair to get a good look at both of them and Palmer holds Aedre over both bassinets, letting her wave at the two sleeping babies.

He's sent pictures to as many people as he can think to. Aurora and Izani, and then Hayden and Lissy. Several to Ari hours later in response to her indignant insistence that she hadn't gotten any.

And then, finally, they get Sherina.

She's wildly insistent that she's fine after almost three straight days of sleep, spending her time bedridden because no one will let her do anything. Even the doctor's and nurses are convinced she's fine, as recovered as the word can mean after the distress of the fourth. She went to asleep almost entirely normal and gave birth to _two _children less than twelve hours later.

They're using up a lot of their miracles early.

She eases herself into the room, still walking slower than normal, and bursts into tears the second she's past the curtain. Aleron pauses behind her and lets her go about her business. He rises out of his chair, but stays put.

"I knew I was going to cry," she says thickly. "I'm going to cry all over them."

They didn't even let her see them they got whisked away so fast. Carden's brought her pictures, too, but that's nothing. Not compared to this. She may not be their actual, technical parent but this is still worth so much more.

"You want them?" he asks, and she nods rapidly, sitting down in his abandoned chair.

It's not so bad, now. They're each only hooked up to two things anymore; the blood pressure cuff around their ankles and the sticky pads on their chest attached to the monitor behind the bassinets. He's forgotten the word, but seeing their heart rates and their breathing strong and steady comforts him like nothing else does. Both of those things are almost entirely hidden beneath their individual blankets anyway.

He gentle lays the first one against her left arm. "Alright, Auntie Sherina, this is Kastel. He ate up some extra ounces and refused to share with his sister. Kas, this is one of your aunts. She's a bit of a mess at the moment so you'll have to excuse her."

Sherina manages a choked laugh, wiping at the tears streaming down her face. "I am, I'm sorry buddy. I won't be this bad all the time."

"She will be," Aleron says, though he's got a smile on his face. Compared to the stress and exhaustion of the past few days, seeing that is one of the greatest reliefs in the world.

Sherina hardly notices him approach again, but curls her arm tight around the second of the two as soon as Carden deposits the bundle into her arms.

He can't stop himself from smiling, too. "This is Shyra. She doesn't cry nearly as much as you do, though."

She makes a downright awful noise, both hands holding them close even though she looks up, first at him and then distantly at Aleron.

"Don't look at me," Aleron says. "It wasn't my idea."

"_Carden_," she complains. "That's not actually her name. Shut up."

He crouches down in front of her, enough to get a good look at her face through the tears that have refused to cease. "I'm not big on naming people after others, you know? But I wanted something, and we both really liked that and argued about almost anything else. I didn't think you'd—"

"Shut up," she says again, a clear interruption. "I hate you both."

"Don't make me go un-file that birth certificate," Aleron says, a thinly veiled threat that holds little merit. "Listen, the registration office is already pissed at me cause the hyphenation ruined their day. I don't want to make it any worse."

Sherina is both laughing and crying now, he thinks. That or having a complete and utter lengthy breakdown in infant intensive care, holding both of their children in the tight grasp of her arms. They're both here because of her, because they made the decision to start something he's sure not one of them thought they would ever have.

If this is the last miracle that they ever get, then he'll take it.

She hunches down to kiss them both on the forehead, and maybe there are some tears mixed in with the curve of her smile, but they feel like good ones.

It feels like everything's good.

* * *

July 14th, 2226.

"Alright, babies," Carden says. "Welcome home."

Aleron tries very, very hard not to melt into a puddle all over the floor and die. For once he has zero complaints about being reduced to the bag boy - he lets himself linger in the front door while Carden takes his first steps into the house, carefully toeing off his shoes with a precision that he never has before.

He's got Shyra in his left arm and Kastel in his right, though Shyra has her legs curled up and she appears more like a ball than a baby. Carden's moving down the hall at a snail's pace, nodding his head at every little thing as if he's showing them everything in their house for the first time. He's not a hundred percent sure, but last time Aleron looked they were both fast asleep.

Sherina loops her arm tighter around his, leaning into his side. "Are you dying on the inside right now?"

"Outside too," he answers instantly, and she laughs. It's just the sheer relief of being _home _finally, of having them both out of the fragile stages of their first days of life, of having Sherina okay, if not a little tired. They're all tired.

He watches Carden shuffle his way to the end of the hall, still murmuring to them under his breath. They're definitely still asleep, judging by the gentle tone of his voice, and he's doing it anyway.

He should've known he would.

Carden turns around and smiles at him over the tops of their heads. _Love you_, he mouths, letting the smile linger until it's one of the only things he can focus on.

Something finally feels right in him. Whole. This is their home - this is _everything_. Aleron never thought he'd even come close to that.

And for once in his life, that everything is just about complete.

* * *

At the end of it all, the issue with Carden Kenmore was his life.

That's it. To the point, simple, all the way through. Not his lack thereof, really, but how much of it he had.

He got luckier than most. People like him didn't just earn lives like the one he got out of nowhere. He fought for it. Refused to die multiple times for it. He came back from the brink of a simple _everything _in the world to have it.

And the issue with Aleron Grenados, at the heart of it, was the lack of life.

That's what happens with puzzles, right? One piece fits into another. One section with more fits into one with less. That doesn't mean the puzzle is completed, though. One piece goes missing. One takes days to find.

And one day, it gets finished.

He spent most of his life thinking his never would be. When the world fell and landed on his shoulders it almost crushed him outright. He almost let it.

Not letting the world win was the best decision he ever made. Some would say, few and far between as they are, that someone like him didn't deserve it and never would. Maybe he didn't. Some days he'll still feel like he doesn't.

But that's the thing about the world - it doesn't matter. It comes back. Life comes back.

So do they.

And the issue with the two of them, really?

Well, there wasn't one anymore.


End file.
